Your toes will tap, your ears will smile with Dr Tom

Tom W. Ferguson (aka Dr. Tom) was born in Alpena, where he began gigging in nightclubs and township halls with his own dance band before graduating from high school in 1960. Over the next half century he obtained an English degree from the University of Michigan, worked as a news-desk editor at the Detroit Free Press, published his own music magazine (Michigan Musician), served as managing editor of a book publishing house (Momentum Books), co-owned and edited a health-care newspaper (Health Care News), served as managing editor of “America’s Largest Country Weekly” (Lapeer County Press), and free-lanced as a book editor and ghost writer. Through the years he remained active as a musical weekend warrior, keeping alive the spirit and material of mid-Twentieth Century nightclub music, ranging from big-band standards to Sinatra ballads, to rhythm and blues, to the intersection of—as the barmaid says in The Blues Brothers—“country AND western.” In June 2021, after 60 years, he returned to his native Alpena County, where he intends to run his last laps playing and singing a lot of the same music he played at places like the Owl Café during the Eisenhower administration. As Dr. Tom’s business card says: “Your toes will tap, your ears will smile.”