 Waller was returning to New York City from Los Angeles, after the smash success of "Stormy Weather", and after a successful engagement at the Zanzibar Room, in Santa Monica, California, during which he had fallen ill. More than 4,200 people were estimated to have attended his funeral at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, which prompted Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who delivered the eulogy, to say that Fats Waller "always played to a packed house.