Pitchfork ranked the soundtrack at 15 on their 50 Best Movie Scores of All Time list, saying that "Old Black is featured in its purest form on the soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch’s hallucinatory western Dead Man.
The reference is to a specific soundtrack for a film called "Dead Man", which was composed by an artist named Old Black and featured prominently in the movie. Pitchfork, a music publication, ranked this soundtrack highly among other great scores.