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.

Mr. 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.

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

“Woke Up This Morning,” which Mr. Black wrote with Mr. Spragg, appeared on the group’s first major-label album, “Exile on Coldharbour Lane” (Geffen Records, 1997). Mr. 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,” Mr. 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.”