I have always heard the 'a' . It's obscured by the nasal stop of the 'm' in "man". Just say it yourself with the midwest twang - "fer a man" - "fer man" ... very little difference.
Agreed.
There are many, many, many occurrences where literalist transcriptions skip words or syllables that are 'swallowed' in normal speech. IMO this reflects very poorly on the intelligence of the transcriber.
ONE SMALL STEP FOR [static/crackle] MAN -- the cadence clearly implies a swallowed and/or static-obscured 'a'.