Bob Dylan

The printable guitar and ukulele tab PDFs below work for many versions of this Bob Dylan classic because they’re rather similar except for speed, phrasing and accompaniment.

The most famous versions of this song are between Bob Dylan’s original* and Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash’s swingin’ country jig version.

The latter was the first time I ever heard the song, from the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary tribute. While the song was fine, I was automatically playing it back in my head at a much slower, lamenting pace, imagined to be sung with strength to accept the mismatch between the singer and the person s/he loved. When I finally learned to play guitar about 10 years after that, this was one of the first songs I learned to play, arranging it the way I wanted to sing it as I had imagined many years before and serving as my “heart ache” song. I play it when love doesn’t go well and it’s like taking ibuprofen for heart aches. But because it’s my “heart ache” song, it ain’t play like no swingin’ country jig the way Johnny Cash plays it, that’s for sure! 🙂

This song isn’t hard to play for chords, but it’s a lot tougher to coordinate your singing entrances, phrasing, endings and cramming in of the occasional slightly long phrases. You’ll find that out as you play through and see where chords fall on the first to fourth syllable of very similar phrases otherwise.

Please click on one of the links below to download printable PDF guitar and ukulele tabs of Bob Dylan’s It Ain’t Me, Babe:

It Ain’t Me, Babe by Bob Dylan, Letter Sized Guitar Tabs PDF

It Ain’t Me, Babe by Bob Dylan, Tabloid Sized Guitar Tabs PDF

It Ain’t Me, Babe by Bob Dylan, Letter Sized Ukulele Tabs PDF

It Ain’t Me, Babe by Bob Dylan, Tabloid Sized Ukulele Tabs PDF

The letter sized tabs have fonts that are quite small to fit on one page. You can enlarge these to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) via preset enlargement settings on most photocopiers. That would still fit in your letter sized binders if folded almost in half, to avoid overlapping with the holes punched. Or you can just print the tabloid sized file directly if you had a printer that could.

Please click here for more printable PDF guitar and ukulele tabs on this site.

Finally, the nicest cover I can find of It Ain’t Me, Babe that’s fast, but not quite country jig mood, “by”Jesse Cook, but it’s Melissa McLelland singing beautifully.

* I had to link to “Chinese YouTube” (Youku) for Bob’s version because his record company forced the now wimpy American YouTube to remove just about everything of his.