Dan Croll Covers Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s “Hello My Baby”

Dan Croll by Larry Hirshowitz

This week’s installment of We’ve Got It Covered is a tiny bit of a stretch since it’s more of a re-working or re-imagining of a song than a straight cover.

Still though, on his debut visit to Morning Becomes Eclectic, the U.K. artist recounted the story of how he came to find “Hello My Baby” and actually work with the legendary African a capella group on a handful of songs.

Through his label partners at Decca, Dan found LSBM’s manager and worked out a scenario where he would fly to Durban, South Africa and collaborate on two of his songs that they would cover and one of theirs that he would interpret. Croll said they were excited about his take as they don’t use instrumentation, just their voices.

Dan had always been influenced by African choral singers and found that unique sound via the typical channel of many music fans… through Paul Simon‘s “Graceland”.

After that discovery, he dug deeper and found more inspiration in African Rhythms through Fela and Femi Kuti which has influenced his new batch of songs, including the single “Compliment Your Soul” which has seen a lot of play on KCRW.

Give it a listen and jump down to hear the original A Capella version by LSBM live. They’re both well worth your time.

Dan Croll — Live on Morning Becomes Eclectic