“It Ain’t Me Babe” was written by Bob Dylan and recorded on 9 June 1964 at CBS’s 30th Street Studio in New York with Tom Wilson producing; Columbia issued it on Another Side of Bob Dylan on 8 August 1964. Dylan’s biographers generally agree that it owes its inspiration to his former girlfriend Suze Rotolo, and he reportedly began writing it on a visit to Italy in 1963, where he had gone looking for her while she was studying there. He first played it in public at a Royal Festival Hall concert in May 1964.
The singer tells a woman at his window to leave and move on at her own speed, because he is not what she is looking for. She wants someone who is never weak, who will protect and defend her whether she is right or wrong, who will never leave and who will open every door; he says he would only let her down.
Within a year the song had been taken up by others. Joan Baez recorded it on Joan Baez/5 (1964), and Dylan and Baez sang it as a duet at the Newport Folk Festival on 24 July 1964. Johnny Cash recorded it with June Carter for his 1965 album Orange Blossom Special, and it became a hit. The Turtles, a Los Angeles band, recorded it in June 1965 at Western Recorders in Hollywood in a folk-rock arrangement; their single, released that July, reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100.
In bluegrass, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys recorded it in Nashville on 21 September 1967, with Flatt singing lead, for their Columbia album Changin’ Times (CL 2796, January 1968). Harley Allen and Mike Lilly recorded it in February 1984 at Jewel Studios in Cincinnati for their Folkways album Suzanne (FTS 31049, 1985), with Allen on guitar and Lilly on banjo, Scott Adams on mandolin, David Moore Jr. on fiddle and Larry Nager on electric bass.
