Soul Survivor : Tom Jones’ pricey turn at the Galaxy starts blandly, but he turns the evening around with a show-saving sequence of R&B;.

Back in the days before every mediocre big-league ball player could afford a driveway full of Rolls-Royces, it was said that singles hitters drove Fords, while home run hitters drove Cadillacs.

There’s a parallel pecking order in pop music. The subtle, introspective song-crafter with the nuanced, human-scale voice might be lucky to eke out a living. But the singer who can belt ‘em out in a voice bigger than life will always draw a crowd.

Tom Jones packed them in Friday night at the Galaxy Concert Theatre--at an all-time O.C. concert-club high of $75 a ticket--because his fans expected two things: a voice of operatic dimensions singing for the fences and sexy-hunk moves no less restrained.

At 57, the amiable Welshman showed that he could still meet their expectations, and exceed a skeptical critic’s.

It was far from perfect. Jones and his 10-member band began badly, proceeded blandly and then, for no discernible reason, decided to play a show-saving sequence of R&B; nuggets as if the ghosts of Otis Redding and Sam Cooke were watching.

Actually, one quite corporeal singer was in the house: Bill Medley, whom Jones greeted as an “old friend” and had him take a bow. That couldn’t have hurt, because nobody wants to come off slack in front of an old classmate, especially since Jones, in a recent press release put out by his production company, is billing himself as “the greatest white R&B; singer there is.”

The Righteous Brothers--Medley and Bobby Hatfield--scored the first big white-guy soul hit of the ‘60s with “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin.”’ Along came Jones six months later, in mid-’65, with his career launching hit, “It’s Not Unusual.”

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It would be very unusual, and tremendously interesting, if Jones would consent to share a future bill with the Righteous Brothers and settle that “greatest white R&B; singer” claim. Then, instead of making between-songs patter about Santa Ana as the namesake of oppressive winds, as he did at the Galaxy, he could note it for its contribution to R&B; history, as the home of the Righteous Brothers.

Early in his set, Jones was hampered by a glaring sound mix and a howlingly awful rendition of the classic honky-tonk ballad, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” His grotesque vibrato bellowing left the George Jones weeper as stiff and embalmed as the laid-out corpse portrayed in its lyric.

Jones did credible work early in his career with a highly produced, Ray Charles-derived mixture of country and R&B;, but in the magnificent George, Tom has found a Jones he can’t keep up with, at least when it comes to singing country songs.

Other than the predominantly female, generationally diverse crowd greeting each bodily twitch and sustained note with shrieks of glee, nothing of interest happened in Jones’ 40-minute opening set.

After intermission, he began to simmer a bit on Marc Cohn’s ode to soul and blues forebears, “Walking In Memphis,” although Jones’ overdrive belting didn’t serve its sense of awe as well as some hushed dynamics would have.

But Jones’ decision to linger in Memphis for some prime soul and R&B; made all the difference. A reading of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” was still a bit too Vegas-smooth, but things were improving. Then the spirit began to move Jones and his band, and everything became focused, vibrant, meaty and funky.

The highlights kept coming: “You Put the Hurt On Me”; Redding’s ballad, “Good to Me”; Randy Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On” (Jones gave a wry account of how his new version of the oft-covered song is used in the hit film “The Full Monty”); and Delbert McClinton’s wry, zooming boogie, “Why Me.”

Now the fans were screaming and jumping for more than Pavlovian reasons; some were festooning the stage with ladies’ undergarments, and Jones, who obviously gets this every night, was reacting with bemused humor.

Then he gave his public what it wanted, with pelvic performances of “She’s a Lady” and “It’s Not Unusual,” and a booming encore highlighted by Lenny Kravitz’s Hendrix rip-off, “Are You Gonna Go My Way,” and Prince’s “Kiss.”

In “Kiss,” when Jones came to the line, “I think I better dance now,” he broke into self-deprecatingly funny hoofing that made John Travolta’s “Pulp Fiction” exhibition look graceful. Jones is no dancer, but he can shimmy and rub his hunky parts all right, and his voice still belts the long ball.

Yes, he’s a musical caricature who lacks subtlety, dimension and emotional range. But when he can generate real heat, as he did during the late innings on Friday, it would be petty to trouble this sultan of vocal swat about his poor fielding.