Mannish Boy

CTL-E-5878 · Work · song · 1955

STRONG EVIDENCE evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-00149 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-W-0033 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5878. Master record source: CTL seed 2026-10-16 — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.

Mannish Boy is a Chicago blues song first recorded by Muddy Waters in Chicago on May 24, 1955, and released that June by Chess Records as Chess 1602, its title spelled “Manish Boy” on the original label. The song was made as an answer record to Bo Diddley's “I'm a Man,” released the same year, and it in turn drew on the stop-time pattern of Waters's 1954 recording “Hoochie Coochie Man,” written by Willie Dixon. On release it reached No. 5 on Billboard's R&B chart. Waters kept the song at the center of his repertoire for the rest of his career, returning to it on the albums Electric Mud in 1968 and Hard Again in 1977, and performing it in the concert film The Last Waltz. In 1986 the recording was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in its Classics of Blues Recordings category, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame included it among the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Rolling Stone also placed the song on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, recognition that marks the record as one of the foundation texts of electric Chicago blues.

The record

• Also known as: Manish Boy
• Year: 1955
• Work type: song

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 1 — 747 Program, Wave 8; first Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Mannish Boy entity in the live graph at 3,523 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5878 free. Hand-read: the performer, Muddy Waters, is homed as CTL-E-0001, and Chess Records as CTL-E-0165; the song itself was the gap. The original Chess label spelling 'Manish Boy' is carried as an alias, not blended into the canonical title. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — corpus scan tail tranche (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #357). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — a canonical Chicago blues recording by a homed graph artist on a homed Chicago label. Vital status: N/A — Work record. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): reached No. 5 on Billboard's R&B chart on its 1955 release (Fender); released June 1955 as Chess 1602, recorded May 24, 1955 in Chicago (Discogs release data). No other statistic is asserted. MEDIA: photo HELD (no image verified at file-page level in this pass; named candidate is the Chess 1602 'Manish Boy' single label image (1955)); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5878-mannish-boy.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short in the catalog and no verified embeddable archival video staged); audio HELD (the 1955 Chess recording itself is a commercial recording with unverified reuse rights in this pass; no audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Work records carry no map slot under the media-layer rule; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (The 1955 Chess recording is a commercial recording with unverified reuse rights in this pass; no audio was sta)

Relationships

• Chess Records — released by
  The original 1955 single was released by Chess Records as Chess 1602 in June 1955 (Discogs release data).
• Muddy Waters — authored by
  Mannish Boy was recorded and released under Muddy Waters's name — the 1955 Chess single is credited to 'Muddy Waters And His Guitar' (Discogs release data for Chess 1602), and Fender's history treats it as Waters's recording throughout his career.

Sources

• Fender, "How to Play Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters" (Fender Play article, accessed 2026-10-16) — first recorded 1955; No. 5 on Billboard's R&B chart; Blues Hall of Fame and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll; Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs; later versions on Electric Mud (1968), Hard Again (1977) and in The Last Waltz — https://www.fender.com/articles/songs/learn-how-to-play-mannish-boy-by-muddy-waters (build store)
• Discogs, "Muddy Waters And His Guitar – Manish Boy / Young Fashion Ways" release data (accessed 2026-10-16) — Chess 1602, released June 1955; recorded May 24, 1955 at Universal Recording, Chicago; original label spelling 'Manish Boy' — https://www.discogs.com/release/4328029-Muddy-Waters-And-His-Guitar-Manish-Boy-Young-Fashion-Ways (build store)
• Music365, "'Mannish Boy' by Muddy Waters" (October 6, 2019) — an answer/response to Bo Diddley's 'I'm a Man' (1955), itself derived in large part from 'Hoochie Coochie Man' (1954) — https://mymusic365.co.uk/10-06-2019-mannish-boy-by-muddy-waters (build store)
• Musicology Blog, "Of Men and Blues: A Timeless Dive into Muddy Waters' 'Mannish Boy'" (accessed 2026-10-16) — inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1986 under 'Classic of Blues Recordings – Singles or Album Tracks' — https://www.musicology.blog/mannish-boy-how-muddy-waters-served-up-a-blues-masterpiece/ (build store)
• https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/ttabvue-92057288-CAN-22.pdf (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Song title as listed: 'Manish Boy' [sic] Recording artist: Muddy Waters Blues Foundation Blues Hall of Fame list frames it as Chess, 1955, a Classic of Blues Recording inductee (1986 class)

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Record CTL-E-5878 · Combined Graph record U-00149 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 5 sources · 2 mapped relationships.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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