“I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby” was written by Autry Inman, an Alabama-born singer and songwriter (1929–1988) who recorded for Decca from 1952 and later turned to rockabilly. The Louvin Brothers, Ira and Charlie Louvin, recorded it for Capitol on 29 October 1955 at Castle Studio in the Tulane Hotel in Nashville, with Ken Nelson producing; Charlie sang and played guitar, Ira sang and played mandolin, and the session also had Paul Yandell and Eddie Hill on guitars, Lightnin’ Chance on bass and Marvin Hughes on piano. It came out on Capitol 3300 with “In the Middle of Nowhere” on the other side. The Country Music Hall of Fame counts it among the duo’s first three Top Ten singles, calls it chart-topping, and notes that, like the other two, it had no drums.
The lyric is told as a dream. After a rainy night, the singer imagines walking under a harvest moon and meeting a loved one in the moonlight, with a stranger at that person’s side; the jealous moment passes when the stranger mentions a brother who wants to marry, and the song ends with the singer confident of a marriage.
It has been recorded often in bluegrass and country. Jim and Jesse McReynolds cut it for their Louvin Brothers tribute album, Saluting the Louvin Brothers (Epic, 1969), and Jerry Douglas recorded it with Alison Krauss singing lead on his Slide Rule (Sugar Hill, 1992). The Bluegrass Cardinals included it on Home Is Where the Heart Is (Sugar Hill, 1984).
