Bird and The Midnight Falcons witness the Heartbeats rehearsing for a competition and are concerned they could lose; frontman Victor "Bird" Thomas asks his girlfriend to invite her friends and boo The Heartbeats while cheering The Falcons. The announcer, a cousin of one of the Falcons, forces The Heartbeats to use the house piano player. Duck grows frustrated with the house player's poor playing, and shoves him off the piano stool. Eddie leads the group in a number that results in Bird's girlfriend fainting in Eddie's arms. The Heartbeats win the contest and the interest of Big Red Davis, who owns Big Red Records. Big Red offers them a deal, but Jimmy and his wife Eleanor, aware of Big Red's corruption, decline. The group instead releases their first single on Jimmy's own independent label and searches for a record company they can trust, but no one else is interested aside from a label which wants to buy Duck's songs for a group they've already signed, The Five Horsemen, prompting the Heartbeats to sign with Big Red.