In 1928 New York, spirits are high and jazz, dancing and gangsters rule supreme. Harlem's Cotton Club is in the center of it all, where rich upper-eastsiders mix with dressed-up mobsters. On stage is gifted coronet player Dixie Dwyer, who dreams of the big time, and tap sensation Sandman Williams who can't touch his girl, the lovely singer Lila Rose Oliver, because of strict club rules. As tension rises, so do tempers, and the nightclub becomes a pressure-cooker of jilted loves and mob jobs.