You only need to hear a couple of seconds of the reverb-effect keyboards and rumbling bass that opens up Alabama 3’s Woke Up This Morning to visualise Tony Soprano motoring his way down the New Jersey Turnpike, Manhattan in his rearview mirror, in the iconic sequence that opened every episode of The Sopranos. Speaking to The New Cue about the track’s creation, Alabama 3 singer Rob Spragg said that stretch of road was integral to how it came to be used in the classic show about a loveable, put-upon and quite psychotic mob boss and his struggles, because that’s where the Sopranos creator heard the song for the first time.
“David Chase told me that the first time he heard it, he was driving down the New Jersey freeway, which is at the start of every episode, and the track came on the radio,” Spragg, also known as Larry Love, said. “He heard it and thought it was perfect. We’d just signed to Geffen Records at the time, it was just on the radio at random and he chased us down. He thought we were three black kids from Brooklyn, and then he found out it was a Welshman and a Scotsman in Brixton in London.”
