Jake Black, a composer of the 'Sopranos' theme, dies at 59

Jake Black, who wrote “Woke Up This Morning,” the indelible theme song for the groundbreaking HBO drama “The Sopranos,” with a bandmate in the group Alabama 3, died on Tuesday in London. He was 59.

Therese Mullan, a representative of Alabama 3, said the cause was acute respiratory illness.

Black and Rob Spragg founded Alabama 3 in the Brixton neighborhood of London in the 1990s. The group, which combined genres as disparate as blues, country, gospel and acid house, built a following and became known for its energetic live shows with a rotating cast of musicians.

Black died days after Alabama 3 performed at a festival in Lancashire, England.

“Woke Up This Morning,” which Black wrote with Spragg, appeared on the group’s first major-label album, “Exile on Coldharbour Lane” (Geffen Records, 1997). Spragg performed the ominous lead vocal on the song, which features a sample of the blues singer Howlin’ Wolf.

“We later found out that David Chase, the writer, was driving the New Jersey Freeway, the route that Tony Soprano would take in the series, and the track came on the radio at the time and he went, ‘I want that band,’ thinking we were from Alabama,” Spragg said in an interview with what is now the British newspaper The Derby Telegraph in 2010 (though the highway Tony mainly took was the New Jersey Turnpike). “Then he finds out it’s a Welshman and a Scotsman living in Brixton, pretending to be American. But he loved it and still wanted the track.”

Two years later a version of “Woke Up This Morning” accompanied the opening sequence of “The Sopranos,” Chase’s critically acclaimed and immensely popular saga about a New Jersey Mafia family.

In that sequence, Tony Soprano, the family patriarch played by James Gandolfini, is driving home in North Jersey while the pulsating song plays on the soundtrack. It ends with Tony parking in the driveway of his upscale suburban house as the phrase “got yourself a gun” reverberates.

“Woke Up This Morning” became instantly recognizable to the show’s many fans. It was sampled by the rapper Nas on his 2001 hit “Got Ur Self a ...,” and its hook was borrowed by the dance-hall reggae artist Beenie Man on the 2002 single “Get Yourself a Gun.”

Spragg told the free newspaper Metro in 2008 that the success of “Woke Up This Morning” “keeps us out of the job center.”

“Now that ‘The Sopranos’ has been syndicated all around the world,” he added, “we’re thinking about doing ‘Woke Up This Morning’ in Mandarin Chinese, Albanian and Russian, just like David Bowie did with ‘Heroes.’”

John Black was born on April 27, 1960, in Basildon, Essex, England, and grew up in Glasgow. He is survived by a brother, Robert, and two sisters, Janice and Lynn.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Jake Black, a composer of the 'Sopranos' theme, dies at 59

Jake Black, who wrote “Woke Up This Morning,” the indelible theme song for the groundbreaking HBO drama “The Sopranos,” with a bandmate in the group Alabama 3, died on Tuesday in London. He was 59.

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