Bossier City, Louisiana, September 16, 2016. The CenturyLink Center smelled like popcorn and old denim. A Friday night crowd of 8,000 (mostly graying, mostly gentle) had come to say goodbye to the Gentle Giant without quite admitting that’s what they were doing.

Don Williams walked out alone. No band intro, no flashy lights, just a black Resistol hat pulled low and the soft click of boot heels on hardwood. He was 77, thin as a fence post, moving like every step was measured in memories instead of miles. When he reached the mic, he didn’t speak right away. He just looked out at the sea of faces, smiled the smallest smile, and said, almost to himself, “Well… let’s do one more.”

Then he counted it off—one, two, three, four—and slipped into “Tulsa Time” like it was a warm jacket he’d worn every day for forty years.

I left Oklahoma drivin’ in a Pontiac just about to lose my mind…

The voice was lower now, a little rough around the edges, but it still carried that impossible honeyed calm that made you feel the highway dust in your throat and the ache of leaving in your chest. He didn’t push it. He never had. Don never shouted when a whisper would do.

The crowd knew every word. By the second verse they were singing it for him, thousands of voices folding around one man like a quilt. He let them take the chorus, dropped his hands from the guitar, and just listened, eyes half-closed, swaying the way tall grass moves when the wind decides it’s had enough.

Livin’ on Tulsa time…

When he came back in on the bridge, something shifted. You could hear it in the way he lingered on the line “I was livin’ right…”—not regret, not pride, just the quiet acceptance of a man who had driven every mile he was supposed to drive and was finally okay pulling over.

He stretched the last chorus the way only a man with nothing left to prove can stretch it. No hurry. No fireworks. Just truth hanging in the air like cigar smoke in an old honky-tonk.

When the final chord settled, there was no big finish, no raised arms, no “thank y’all, goodnight!” He simply touched the brim of his hat, nodded once, and said, voice soft as flannel, “God bless you. I love you.”

Then he walked off the way he came on: slow, steady, and without looking back.

Two years later, almost to the day, Don Williams died quietly at home in Mobile, Alabama, after a short illness. He was 78.

But on that September night in Louisiana, “Tulsa Time” wasn’t just a No. 1 hit from 1978 anymore. It was the sound of a man easing his old Pontiac onto the off-ramp, turning the radio down, and heading toward whatever comes after the last chorus.

And 8,000 people sang him all the way there.

Thank you, Don. We’re still livin’ on your time. 🤠🙏