POP MUSIC REVIEW : Soul Men: Like Father, Like Son : The O’Jays’ Eddie Levert and his son Gerald, in their groups’ respective sets, deliver plenty of class, passion and emotion.

Youth or experience--which do women prefer? That Oprah-worthy question seemed to be raised Sunday as the O’Jays’ Eddie Levert and son Gerald, who leads the group called Levert, offered two generations of grind to the largely female crowd that packed the Celebrity Theatre.

Father and son, in their groups’ respective sets, each worked the crowd with passionate, declamatory vocals, accenting them with pelvic gyrations and supine ministrations visited upon the floor of the theater’s rotating stage.

While 25-year-old Gerald proved the more overt Levert--he and band mates Sean Levert (another of Eddie’s progeny) and Marc Gordon indulged in some modern crotch-grabbing moves--49-year-old Eddie drew the most rapturous screams from the crowd. When he bared his torso to the fans, his stomach may have looked more washtub than washboard, but his emotion-charged voice won out.

And, as effective as both the elder and younger Leverts’ passion plays were on the audience, they didn’t distract from the musical gifts of either group, both of which are class acts all the way.

Eddie and fellow O’Jays co-founder Walter Williams have been performing together since the late ‘50s--Sammy Strain replaced William Powell after Powell died in 1977--and unlike so many rock performers of even lesser vintage, they take an evident joy and pride in their work.

And work it was: Their unfettered, full-throttle vocals were accompanied by animated-but-precise unison dance steps and the aforementioned romantic gymnastics, going on nearly without respite through the 20-song performance.

The three singers did justice to their grand legacy with heated versions of “For the Love of Money,” “Stairway to Heaven” (No, not that “Stairway to Heaven”) and “Use Ta Be My Girl.” But they only did a few bars each of their best known songs, “Back Stabbers” and “Love Train.”

They scarcely allowed an opportunity for those to be missed, though, by offering overwhelming versions of recent hits. On most songs Williams and Levert worked as a seductive relay team: Williams would take the first lead, smoothly finessing a lyric, and then Levert would roar in with his volcanic, pumice-rough voice.

That was the pattern on the single “Keep On Lovin’ Me,” with Levert and Strain keeping to the background, executing deft, light-toed dance steps while Williams crooned the opening verses. Then Levert thundered in, shouting and pleading, straddling his microphone stand on the floor, tearing his jacket open and eliciting a screaming frenzy from his female fans.

A similar musical pattern prevailed on “Serious Hold on Me,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Forever Mine” and “Emotionally Yours.” That latter song is a Bob Dylan obscurity from his 1985 “Empire Burlesque” album, and the O’Jays make such a powerful devotional love song of it that it nearly redeems Dylan’s artistry from his haphazard past decade.

Gerald Levert’s group clearly has learned much from its family connection. Its set revealed a similar mix of polished showmanship and gritty emotion. But they aren’t just Mo’Jays. The music takes a decidedly more modern twist, incorporating hip-hop sounds and a harder-edged dance pulse. The dancing of the three--abetted by a trio of non-singing dancers--was also far more antic.

Gerald pushed the showmanship a tad further than his dad: On the No. 1 hit “Baby I’m Ready” he at one point crawled up the theater aisle on his hands and knees while pleading into his mike. He got only slightly less carried away on “Just Coolin’,” “(Pop, Pop, Pop) Goes My Mind,” “All Season,” “Rain” and “Casanova.”

Before either group performed, Eddie and Gerald came onstage unexpectedly to duet on Gerald’s solo-album hit “Baby Hold on to Me.” The one-upping exchange of their shouting voices could have been the highlight of the evening, but it was robbed of some impact by not being placed in the already-heated context of either group’s set. Openers Rude Boys failed to make much of an impression with a three-song set, due both to its brevity and to a poor sound mix that buried the vocals.