Ladies win at WDAS' Holiday Jam

The late Don Cornelius would've dug Friday's Soul Train Music's first WDAS Holiday Jam at the Liacouras Center. Cornelius, the man who created the African American dance program, loved Philly. The band MFSB's 1974 hit, "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" was once Soul Train's theme song. This city loved Cornelius back, evidenced in part by Philly's Questlove's having penned Soul Train: The Music, Dance, and Style of a Generation in 2013.

It made sense then that DJ Questlove was the glue holding Soul Train's WDAS Holiday Jam together, spinning vintage funk and rap between sets from '90s soul classicists Faith Evans, Joe, Ledisi, Kem, and Philly's own Jill Scott.

Every singer was musically dynamic, deeply soulful, and displayed the rich romanticism of hurt emotions and joyful epiphanies. But if you split the night's victories between the men and the ladies of adult contemporary R&B, the lasses won handily.

The gents? Joe was a deep-voiced smoothie in tux and black patent leather shoes, with an athletic, debonair manner that found him leaping into the audience for female face-time. "I even wore my cummerbund," he purred after a stirring "When I Was Your Man." The higher-voiced Kem, resplendent in a tight, shiny suit, played elegant homespun soul ("My Favorite Thing" with lyrics like "I love her like sweet potato pie") and pastoral Bruce Hornby-ish ballads ("Why Would You Stay").

Still, the women were better. Hip-hop doyenne Evans commenced proceedings with simmering heartiness - a big, femme voice with small, intricate subtleties. Scott kidded the crowd, describing her curly hairdo as "Claire Huxtable meets Vanessa Del Rio," and sang through some busily unfocused arrangements. Luckily, everything came together on the ruggedly percussive "Quick," with strong participation from her all-male vocal trio.

That left Ledisi to steal the show. It wasn't just her Teena Marie-like vocal frippery, soaring highs on "Them Changes" or the dazzlingly anthemic jazz-soul slink of "Pieces of Me" and "Like This." She was strong yet self-deprecating, mocking her wardrobe choices ("I paid for this") and weight gain ("there's just more of me now") while reminding the crowd that, as a one-time independent artist now on a major label, it was God and her fans who put her on top, and that any woman could do likewise. Hallelujah to that.