Winehouse, shminehouse. When the Dap Kings, the ace house band of Brooklyn’s agreeably retro Daptone soul label, showed up at the Black Cat Friday Thursday night, they brought their real soul singer, Sharon Jones.

I know: It’s not a fair comparison. The Dap Kings were never really anything more than just guns for hire when they played with Amy Winehouse, whereas they’ve recorded three marvelous albums with Jones. I never got to see James Brown in his prime (though I did catch a glimpse of him passed out the back seat of a limo in a Waffle House parking lot when he played at my college — true!), but I’ve spent a lot of blissful hours with Live at the Apollo, Vol. II and Love Power Peace, and last night’s show was probably the closest I’ve come to experiencing a show as soulful as the ones documented on those records in person.

The Dap Kings came on first and treated us to 20 minutes of easy funk, Tommy 'TNT' Brenneck's squiggly guitar lines and the horn section's staccato bursts held in check by “Bosco” Mann’s rubbery bass groove. Guitarist/vocalist Binky Griptite welcomed us “to the Daptone Super Soul Revue!” and led the band through his own “Mellow Matic Mood” and “One Time” before introducing Jones with a Bobby Byrd-style recitation of the names of her "greatest hits," such as they are.

Photo of Sharon Jones by Dulce Pinzon; courtesy of Motormouthmedia.

Sauntering on in a yellow sleeveless dress, Jones instantly displayed an authority that must have served her well in her prior career as a Riker's Island prison guard. On “How Do You Let a Good Man Down,” she pulled bewildered-looking guy up to dance with her, only to start pointing and directing the tune’s you’re-a-good-guy-but-you-just-ain’t-doin’-it-for-me lyrics directly at him.

Audience-member selection-and-removal would remain a motif throughout the show: For “Keep on Looking”, she invited three ladies up to dance and got four, then spent most of the tune dodging their flailing elbows. While the Dap Kings grooved over the bridge, Jones asked each of the ladies to introduce themselves and then shimmy their asses back into the crowd. The last and jiggliest of them — hey, Jones remarked upon it herself — was named Katie, or possibly Katy. Katie/Katy earned some extra stage time for her prodigious dexterity and curvature. Jones' commitment to audience participation was admirable, and the various ways in which she let the volunteers know when it was time for them to leave gave the show some of its funniest moment. But the peak came when Jones dropped the playfulness to focus on the music. The 20-minute sequence of “Let Them Knock” into “Tell Me You Love Me” into “Be Easy” was the evening’s most satisfying stretch, an exquisite 20-minute marathon of smoky soul.

For her encore, Jones gave us a nice duo of covers, James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” followed up with Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Lately?” Whatever the answer, she's done plenty for us.