Brooklyn-raised soul singer Sharon Jones, leader of the Dap-Kings, is often mistaken for the understudy to boozy British singer Amy Winehouse. And that's grating to Jones, 52, who helped push the Dap-Kings sound into the American spotlight.

The confusion began when producer Mark Ronson went looking for a vintage sound for Winehouse's breakthrough 2006 album, "Back to Black." He hired the Dap-Kings, a suit-wearing octet that recalls such soul legends as Booker T. and the M.G.s. It is their throwback sound on Winehouse's Grammy-winning song, "Rehab" — and on five others on the album.

"It was a problem because we worked so hard" to get to that point, Jones said recently from Chicago, her voice hoarse after a particularly grueling set of European tour dates. "Then, it took someone else to come in there and spend a few days, a few weeks with the Dap-Kings, and next thing you know they're up getting a Grammy."

But at a series of crowd-pleasing music festivals across the country this summer, it's Jones in front of the band, where she's been since 1996.

Playing before tens of thousands of concertgoers is a lofty goal for most musicians, but especially for a singer with a background like Jones'. Born in Augusta, Ga., in 1956, Jones moved to New York with her mother when she was 3 after her parents separated. As a teenager, she was told that she was too dark-skinned to make it as a performer, that she didn't have "the look," she said.

Singing in church groups and performing at weddings on the side, she worked as a corrections officer at New York's Rikers Island jail. It wasn't until she was nearly 40 that she caught on with a group of musicians who would eventually become the Dap-Kings.

Despite modest sales of three releases on indie label Daptone Records (most recently 2007's "100 Days, 100 Nights"), Jones and the band have earned a reputation for putting on one of the most electrifying and distinctive live shows touring today. "If they don't see you on TV or read about you, they don't know about you," Jones said. "Thank God for the Internet and these computers, because other than that, it would be tough for us in America. But now, everybody (is) gettin' on the bandwagon."

Outside the United States, YouTube shows the bandwagon is getting full: Here's Jones in Germany, shimmying across the stage in high-heel boots and a thigh-length floral dress during the band's brassy "How Do I Let a Good Man Down?"; on Dutch television, she sings of the "100 Days, 100 Nights" required to know a man's heart; and on France's Canal Plus channel, she exhorts the curious audience to supply the "woo-ooh" fills on "Nobody's Baby."

"Can y'all handle it?" she asks the crowd, her Brooklynese rising above a steady groove held by Dap-Kings bassist and producer Gabriel Roth, who performs under the stage name Bosco "Bass" Mann. "There's a lot of y'all in here. Come on, a little louder. People are watching all over!"

Jones' voice and the band's sound are decidedly reminiscent of Motown's heyday in the late '50s and early '60s. Their name recalls groups from the legendary Stax Records catalog such as the Mar-Keys and the Bar-Kays. And vocally, Jones is the latest singer to earn praise as "the female James Brown." The collective's ethos is authentically American, which makes it even more interesting that it has captured the attention of Western Europe.

"They just watch me, the energy that we put on," Jones said of performing before audiences that may not understand every word she sings.

"That's the thing that I have. And I learned it in church; my pastor always told us that what comes from the heart reaches the heart."