Gordon Lightfoot wrote “I’m Not Sayin’” and recorded it in December 1964. It came out as a single in 1965, with “For Loving Me” on the other side, and reached number 12 on the Canadian chart that June. A trade-paper review that April called it “a rhythmic, folkish ode about a guy who refuses to make any romantic promises to his girlfriend.” The recording was not on an album until Lightfoot’s debut, Lightfoot!, which United Artists released in January 1966.
The words are a list of what the singer will not guarantee. He is not saying he loves her, that he will care, that he will be there when she wants him, or that he will never say something that makes her cry. He admits he may not always show up when he promised, and he may be seen with someone else along the street or in a small café, yet he swears he will neither deny her nor mistreat her. All he offers is that he will try.
The German singer Nico recorded it in May 1965 for Immediate Records, with Jimmy Page, then a studio musician, playing 12-string guitar and producing. Other artists who have recorded it include James Booker, Turley Richards, the Ian Campbell Folk Group and the Replacements. Norman Blake and Tony Rice cut it at Bias Recording Studios in Springfield, Virginia, for their duo album Blake & Rice (Rounder, 1987), with Rice singing the lead and the two of them on guitars.
