Mannish Boy

Muddy Waters wrote "Mannish Boy" with Mel London and Bo Diddley, the two men being credited under their birth names. The song worked as an answer to Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man", which itself drew inspiration from "Hoochie Coochie Man", the earlier Waters and Willie Dixon composition. Built on a repeating stop-time figure over a single chord, it carried bold sexual claims on the surface, but its spelling out of "I'm a man" carried a political weight. Waters had recently left the South for Chicago, where Black Americans who grew up in the South were never referred to as men, only as boys. In that context, the song became an assertion of black manhood.

Waters recorded "Mannish Boy" in Chicago on May 24, 1955. Little Walter was absent, touring behind his number one hit "My Babe", making this the only Waters recording between January 1953 and June 1957 without him on harmonica. Junior Wells took the harmonica chair instead, in one of his few studio appearances with Waters. Jimmy Rogers played guitar, Fred Below played drums, and an unidentified female chorus also appeared. The single reached number five on the Billboard R&B chart during a six-week stay.

Waters returned to the song repeatedly. He cut it again in 1968 for the Electric Mud album, an attempt by Marshall Chess to attract the rock market, and after leaving Chess he recorded it for the 1977 Hard Again album, produced by Johnny Winter. A live version with Winter appeared on Muddy "Mississippi" Waters – Live in 1979, and Waters also performed it at the Band's farewell concert, The Last Waltz, included in the film and its soundtrack.