“Unwanted Love” is credited to Don Reno, Red Smiley and a third writer named Leftwich. Reno and Smiley and the Tennessee Cut-Ups recorded it on 14 November 1958 at the King studio on Brewster Avenue in Cincinnati, with Smiley singing lead and Reno tenor. Bluegrass Discography lists Reno on banjo, Smiley on guitar, Mack Magaha on fiddle, John Palmer on bass and, probably, Ronnie Reno on mandolin. The same session produced “Better Luck Next Time,” “Wall Around Your Heart” and “Another Day,” along with the instrumentals “Banjo Special” and “Country Latin Special.”
The song waited more than three years for release. It first appeared in 1962 on the King LP Country Singing and Instrumentals, and King put it out as a single, backed with “Better Luck Next Time,” in August 1966.
The singer is looking for someone who has already loved and lost, paid the price, and sworn never to risk another false romance. The chorus imagines two such people sharing the misery of hearts that are unwanted and unwilling to gamble again. Later verses turn down anyone who has never known how it feels to be alone, and picture others in the same state: free on the surface, yet tied to a love they will never claim and afraid to love again.
The Johnson Mountain Boys sang it live at the Lucketts Community Center in Virginia on 20 February 1988, Dudley Connell taking the lead, for At the Old Schoolhouse (Rounder, 1989). The Reno Brothers recorded it on Drawing from the Well (Webco, 1996) with Ronnie Bowman singing lead. In 2016 it appeared on Michael Cleveland’s Fiddler’s Dream (Compass), sung by Jeff White with Vince Gill on harmony, and on Sideline’s Colors & Crossroads (Mountain Fever), with Connell again singing lead.
