Ragtime players coming to Bangor

BANGOR – Ragtime piano player Jazzou Jones from Glenburn and “Mr. Banjo” Mike Gentry from Arkansas, performers on the Mississippi riverboat, Delta Queen, will bring their show, “Revels from the Mississippi,” to Bangor at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan 23, at John Bapst Memorial High School.

The piano and banjo duo will take the audience on an all-American musical journey marked by old-time riverboat entertainment featuring classic ragtime and sing-along songs.

Mike Gentry is an artist of the plectrum banjo and has performed on the “Ed Sullivan Show,” the “Mike Douglas Show” and on Walt Disney specials. He spent eight years with Your Father’s Mustache, a worldwide nightclub chain, and a 15-year run on America’s only overnight passenger steamboats, the Delta Queen, the Mississippi Queen and the American Queen out of New Orleans.

It was on the Mississippi Queen in 1993 that Mike Gentry and Jazzou Jones teamed up as a featured act in the Paddlewheel Lounge.

Jones has been associated with the Delta Queen Steamboat Company since 1978. In addition to the ragtime classics of Scott Joplin, James Scott and Joseph Lamb, Jones plays his own ragtime compositions, “High Water” and “Paddlewheel Rag” in his performances.

Tickets are available at Patrick’s Hallmark Store at the Broadway Shopping Center, at John Bapst Memorial High School Fine Arts Office when school is in session and at the door. Tickets are $12, $15 for couples and $10 for seniors. For information, call the school at 947-0313.