“Faded Love” is a Western swing standard credited to the bandleader Bob Wills and his father, the old-time fiddler John Wills, with some accounts adding Bob’s brother Billy Jack Wills. By Bob Wills’s own telling, the tune grew out of an older fiddle piece his father played — a melody related to the 1856 parlor ballad “Darling Nelly Gray” — which the two reworked into a new song.
Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys recorded “Faded Love” in 1950, and it became one of their signature numbers and a country hit. With its sweeping fiddle melody and its lyric of a love grown cold, the song quickly passed into the common repertoire of country, Western swing, and bluegrass musicians.
It has been recorded countless times since; a 1980 duet by Ray Price and Willie Nelson became the best-known later version.
