Honey Boy Golden is a teenage trumpet prodigy who wants to meet God, so he melts blues, waltzes, military marches, gospel, and African drum music together to invent jazz, right around 1900 it was. Along the way he falls in love with a young beauty and then finds his long lost father up in Natchez, Mississippi. His father hears him play and urges Honey Boy to return to his New Orleans home and lead a band in the Independence Day Parade.