Alabama 3

Alabama 3 (known in the United States as A3) are an English music group from Brixton. Formed by Jake “The Very Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love” Black and Rob “Larry Love” Spragg in 1995, the band’s ambitions aimed to connect the dots between American roots music and England’s booming rave scene. They began performing under the name First Presleyterian Church of Elvis the Divine but quickly changed it to Alabama 3 and signed with One Little Indian Records in 1997. Later that year, their studio debut Exile on Coldharbour Lane climbed to Number 12 on the UK Independent Albums Chart. The album contained the song “Woke Up This Morning,” a throbbing hip-hop-tinged number that became wildly popular thanks to its inclusion in the opening credits of seminal crime drama The Sopranos. Over the course of the next decade, Alabama 3 became a mainstay in the UK indie charts with albums such as La Peste (2000), Power in the Blood (2002), Outlaw (2005), M.O.R. (2007), and Revolver Soul (2010). After losing founding member Jake Black to Addison’s disease in 2019, the band soldiered on with the release of Step 13 in 2021.