"In the late 1960's, I checked my first Fats Waller album (Valentine Stomp) out of the Dayton, Ohio, Public Library. As a teenaged jazz fan and budding comedy performer, I suppose it was inevitable that I would meet and fall in love with Fats' work."

"Music, of course, was at the center of the Harlem Renaissance. Jazz blossomed and took the popular culture by storm. Musicians like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday – and, of course, Fats Waller – created a legendary sound that survives and thrives today."

"So many of the songs touch on very basic ideas about human existence that don't really change over time. I think it's the fresh sense of melody that combines with this really sophisticated rhythmic and harmonic language and vocabulary. You may not know anything about music but you know that Fats' music pulls you in in some different way, in a way that other music doesn't."

"The history of black musicals in America … is a continuum of sensational entertainers—from Bill Robinson and Ethel Waters to Jennifer Holliday and Savion Glover—giving unforgettable performances."

"What is it about this piece that evokes so much spirit, originally conceived by Richard Maltby Jr. and Murray Horwitz?  It could be nostalgia for an era of cultural creativity in art and music; an era when jazz music began taking root in African American culture."

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