Back when he debuted in the mid-’90s — and when the burgeoning retro-soul audience caught up with him a decade later for his excellent 2006 breakthrough, People Gonna Talk — James Hunter’s buttery-smooth vocal stylings and svelte, dapper ’50s-style arrangements made him a double-take-worthy dead ringer for Sam Cooke. On Minute by Minute (Go/Fantasy), his fifth album in two decades and the first to acknowledge his crackerjack backing combo (in number, at least), he sounds, if anything, even less like what you’d expect from an unassuming-looking Englishman, trying on a smokier, Ray Charles-via-Jackie Wilson vocal grittiness to match his band’s horn-heavy throwdowns. With Gabriel Roth, Daptone Records’ soul-revival kingpin, behind the boards, Hunter and the Six dip into chicken-shack funk, “Tequila”-style Latin-tinged acoustic groovers and the title track’s hard-swinging organ-led strut, alongside their more refined, jazzier supper-club fare — all on original tunes that’d handily pass a smell test as unearthed turn-of-the-’60s chestnuts.

Thu., Feb. 28, 8 p.m., $20-$33, World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St., 215-222-1400, worldcafelive.com.