Author: Madison Searle

“Come here, I want to show you something” Ray Benson walks into his office and points to a framed picture on the wall, a poster-size print of the photograph on the cover of For the Last Time, the last record Bob Wills appeared on. On December 3, 1973, several Texas Playboys, joined by Merle Haggard, reunited in the studio and insisted that Wills be there. Four years earlier, a stroke had robbed Wills of the ability to play his fiddle or sing. That night, he’d suffer another stroke. Though he lived another 18 months, he never spoke again. “That’s the last…