Muddy Waters I'm a Man, M-A-N

[steve2470]

http://www.theglobaldispatches.com/articles/muddy-waters-im-a-man-m-a-n

The song has become something of a blues standard, having reached number 5 in the Billboard R&B chart when first released. It was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame “Classics of Blues Recordings” category, as well as being included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame‘s list of the “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll,” and was ranked by Rolling Stone magazine in its list of “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

The song is basically a raunchy number, both musically and lyrically, full of male sexual bravado. When Muddy sings “I’m a natural born lover,” and “I passed 21, I want you to believe me baby, I had lots of fun,” and “I’m made to move you honey,” there’s really no doubt as to what he’s talking about. He also says he’s a “hoochie coochie man” – the hoochie coochie was a sexually provocative dance that became wildly popular in Chicago in the late nineteenth century. The dance was performed by women, so a “hoochie coochie man” either watched them or ran the show.

The song’s chorus goes:

I’m a man
Spell M-A child -N
That represents man
No B-O child -Y
That mean mannish boy.

snip

Despite the clear sensuality of the song, there’s something more going on in the song. In the Southern states under Jim Crow, including Mississippi where Muddy Waters grew up, a black man was never recognized as anything other than a “boy.”