[1] The soundtrack version of this cartoon without dialogue as part of Tom and Jerry and Tex Avery Too!

Pettybone's one love is listening to a record of Dixieland jazz, specifically "Tiger Rag", and pretending to conduct the music.

Pettybone travels to several locations (a cafe, an organ grinder, an ice cream truck and a merry-go-round) in an attempt to play his music, but is thrown out each time.

Pettybone refuses to comply, and so is pursued by him throughout the city, with the fleas playing all the time (putting the fur of Pettybone's rear back on him after a meat market owner cuts it off, stopping when Pettybone slows and creeps quickly to go through a hospital zone and restarting by his command after doing so, slowing down as he is slowed by tar and even taking a smoke break).

As the cartoon concludes with a close-up of the flea circus band, the narrator states no one ever discovered the secret to Pettybone's music and never will.