the record deal with Universal Records Motown and return the advance. “I was like — No absolutely not — crazy,” Maxine says.
“Cindy said to me, ‘Give the money back or we’ll be taking it out of your check.’ That means I’m not an equal partner – that I don’t have any say so. That was the barrier that she crossed. From that point on — I put all of them on notice.”
After that last straw, Maxine hired her own attorney to handle her business and Terry and Cindy ended up fired her from the group that she was a part of founding. As if that wasn’t enough drama, Maxine and Dawn banded together and started touring as En Vogue and then there were ultimately two separate groups of En Vogue. Terry and Cindy weren’t trying to hear that, so they took Maxine to court to prevent her from using their name. Maxine said:
“The arbitrator asked me ‘Who should I give the name too?’ Maxine says. Her response was, “I can’t imagine you taking their right to use the name –- we all had a stake in building it. Let the fans decide which En Vogue they want to see because we’re all En Vogue. We all busted our a**es to make that name what it is. We all should have the right to use the name. I wouldn’t dream of taking anything from them.”
The ending result was that Terry and Cindy won the right to use the name and Maxine eventually had to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy after taking a financial hit from that legal process.
BETRAYAL
[Maxine says] “It’s silly … it’s crazy … it’s not fair,” she says. “I was with that group for more than 25 years – I have a stake in that trademark – we sold more than 30 million records. My voice is on most of the leads. That’s my fight. There’s no way I’m walking away from that. There’s no way until the highest judge in the land tells me. “I’ve more than earned the right to use the name – I am En Vogue.”
This is really sad, but not every story ends with a happy ending. Maxine Jones is now doing her own thing and performs solo and it’s great seeing Terry and Cindy perform together as En Vogue now, they sound just as beautiful as ever, but ain’t nothing like the original four En Vogue members. Terry said that she would love to have Maxine back in the group, but after all that went down, it doesn’t look like that’ll happen any time soon.
As bad as today’s music industry desperately needs REAL singers and female groups, we hope they will all reconsider and push their differences aside for the sake of R&B, because quite frankly, I’m ’bout sick and tired of hearing Beyonce on the radio every hour on the hour. Beyonce’s a phenomenal artist, but the music game just needs more diversity like we had back in the day, that’s all. Every last one of the En Vogue members can SANG…so please ladies, make a comeback TOGETHER soon!
-ILoveOldSchoolMusic, old school news with a new point of view
