At the entrance to the Hi-Hat Club in New York, where Ben Bernie and his band are appearing, a select number of insults regarding Bernie are offered for public enjoyment by Bernie's "pal," gossip columnist Walter Winchell. During his next radio broadcast, Bernie quips about Winchell, then listens to Winchell, in his own broadcast, rib him. When Winchell learns that Eddie Kane, the brother of his assistant Patsy, is arriving in town with his vaudeville partner, Jean Roberts, Winchell puts an extremely favorable notice about them in his column, to play a joke on agents, especially Gus Avery, who has tried to bribe him. Upon the arrival of their train, Eddie and Jean are greeted by swarms of agents, and Jean signs with Avery, who has brought her flowers. Before their audition at a radio station, Eddie witnesses an opera singer faint from "mike fright," and when he and Jean begin their number, he imagines the microphone change into a devil breathing smoke, and then faints himself. Because of his mike fright, Jean leave him to solo. Eddie then gets a job through Patsy as a guide at Radio Center. After he takes visitors to view a broadcast of Alice Huntley singing the inspirational song "Wake Up and Live," Alice agrees to help him get over his mike fright. Later, during a broadcast of Bernie's band from the Hi-Hat Club, Eddie wanders into a vacant studio and sings with the band into a mike, which, unknown to him, is hooked up to the broadcast. Listeners, including Bernie, Winchell, Alice and her boss, James Stratton, the head of Radio Center, are impressed with this new voice, and when Bernie confesses to Stratton that he does not know the identity of the singer, Stratton decides to play up the mystery for publicity. The next night at the club, Bernie introduces a masked crooner as "The Phantom Troubadour," but Winchell unmasks him as a well-known singer. Later, when Eddie sings for Alice, she recognizes his voice as the Phantom's and records it onto a phonograph record without his realizing it. She plays the record for Stratton and Bernie and then has them arrange a remote control hook-up from her apartment, so that when Eddie goes there for help, she can convince him to pretend that he is singing on the radio and actually have him sing into a live mike for the broadcast. The plan works, and Winchell orders his assistant Steve Cluskey, who is Patsy's fiancé, to find Eddie. Meanwhile, Jean recognizes Eddie's voice, and Avery orders her to go back to him. Steve finds out about the broadcasts from Alice's apartment, and Winchell convinces Eddie to sing on his program before the opening of the new Manila Club, as a build-up for Alice. After Jean and Avery locate Eddie, Avery has him kidnapped. Avery then tries to blackmail Winchell by threatening to turn Eddie over to Bernie unless Winchell pays him. Winchell, however, tells Avery that Eddie is the wrong man and to prove it, plays Alice's recording on his show to make it appear that Eddie is in the studio. Avery then tears up the contract that he forced Eddie to sign and releases him. Eddie hitchhikes back to town and goes to the Manila room, where Winchell informs him that he is the Phantom. Although he is overcome at first with mike fright, Eddie is finally able to sing over a microphone, while Bernie and Winchell make up.