Louis Prima Jr. loves it when people leave one of his band's shows in a daze. They'd probably arrived, he said, expecting a low-key lounge act. Instead, when they depart, "they describe it as getting hit by a freight train."

"It's non-stop, beginning to end. High energy is an understatement," Prima said in an interview with NJ Advance Media. "We want people up jumping and having as good a time as we are. It's entertainment the way it used to be."

Listeners can judge for themselves when Louis Prima Jr and the Witnesses take the stage at New Jersey Performing Arts Center's Chambers Plaza for a free concert Aug. 10.

The performance is part of the Horizon Foundation Sounds of the City Presented by M&T Bank, a program that will continue to offer free shows on Thursdays through Aug. 24. Hip-hop duo Black Sheep/Das EFX will perform on Aug 17. Another hip-hop artist, Talib Kweli, will close the season on Aug. 24.

For more information on the program -- which is also sponsored by BD, RWJ Barnabas, Newark Downtown District, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers Newark -- and inclement weather advisories, visit www.njpac.org.

Louis Prima Jr. looks like his father, often sounds like him and can emulate the patriarch's trumpet playing note for note. Prima and his 9-piece band perform some of the older Prima's classics - like "Sing, Sing, Sing" and "Angelina/Zooma Zooma"--as well as original, newer music.

But even those new songs have that distinct "Prima sound:" horn-driven with touches of Italian folk songs, jump blues, big band swing and New Orleans jazz. (Prima Sr. was a Crescent City native.)

"It's still Prima. It may not be all the Prima songs, but it is the Prima sound," Prima Jr. said, noting that songs on his band's 2014 album, "Blow," "do things with horns that bands have not done in many, many years."

Because of all those similarities, it's natural for people to compare the son to the father. But unlike other children who have followed a parent into the entertainment industry that Prima knows - "The majority of them are miserable about it. It's funny to me." - he welcomes the remarks. "

"He was a monster, a genius. Everybody knew he was a great performer but he never gets the credit he's due as a musician and a writer," Prima said. "To be compared to him is one the greatest compliments anyone can give me."

That said, there can be a down side to those assessments, he said. "Some people expect me to be him and they'll go, 'Well, he's not his father,' and I say, 'Well, neither are you.'"

Junior's mother was Senior's widow, singer Gia Maione Prima. (The NJPAC performance is co-sponsored by the Gia Maione Prima Foundation.) Maione Prima used lyrics from one of the songs her husband made popular on his tombstone, "When the end comes, I know, they'll say just a gigolo, life goes on, without me." Maione Prima, who died in 2013, is now also entombed there.

Prima Jr and the Witnesses never have a set playlist, but one constant is Prima's desire to end the show with a traditional New Orleans Second Line dance. He usually chooses "When the Saints Go Marching In" or "Just A Gigolo" to end the night on a high note.

Said Prima, "No matter how many times we do it and people see it, everybody's on their feet for that part of the show."

LOUIS PRIMA JR. AND THE WITNESSES

Horizon Foundations Sounds of the City

NJPAC's Chambers Plaza

1 Center St., Newark. 800-GO-NJPAC.

No tickets are required for this outdoor performance. Aug. 10, 5 -9 p.m. For more information, go to www.njpac.org.

Natalie Pompilio is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. She can be reached at nataliepompilio@yahoo.com. Find her on Twitter @nataliepompilio. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.