The new graphic novel, Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound, documents the many turbulent stories of the singer’s life, including his comeback from heroin abuse, when he received a standing ovation for his performance at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival. Musician and cartoonist Dave Chisholm created the book, adapting it from Davis’ autobiography, interviews, and other writings.
Chisholm tells KCRW that this project took him 10 months to complete, but in a way, it lasted his whole life. He says the first music he remembered listening to was his dad playing the album Sketches of Spain, and since then, he became “a lifelong Miles Davis obsessive.”
In coming up with the illustrations to represent music, Chisholm drew from Miles Davis’ synesthesia. “He says, ‘I see colors and things when I hear music and when I play music. And so I started with that, and I was like, ‘Oh, that's interesting.’ And then his whole angle with his trumpet sound is trying to make his trumpet sound like a human voice. And so to me, the embodiment of … his trumpet sound had to be this special, ghostly humanoid figure. … And over the course of the book then, that humanoid figure gets manipulated and altered, depending on the content of the music that Myles and his various bands play at that time. … I'm really proud of the way that the music depiction turned out in this book.”
The book also looks at Davis’ addictions to heroin and cocaine, plus his physical and emotional abuse toward women. Chisholm explains that Davis’ autobiography is “refreshingly candid but also unnervingly candid” about those issues.
He says of the book, “It's hard to gauge the tone, sometimes he does express some remorse, but sometimes he doesn't. … When I read his autobiography first when I was in high school 25 years ago … it was … definitely for me like, ‘Oh, yeah, I'm not gonna do drugs.’”
Chisholm acknowledges that it would have been irresponsible to “whitewash” Davis’ darker times for this new book and create only “a greatest hits” version.
“He's super compelling, almost because of this stuff, because of the way it contrasts with the sensitivity of his musical self. How is someone who's so emotionally sensitive with his music … so toxic, macho in his day to day?”
He continues, “It makes you wonder: Who's the real Miles? And I feel like at times, he wonders who's the real Miles as well. This is the act of empathy, for me as an author, to try to really get inside of that, to really try to understand it. It was a really big challenge for sure.”
Dave Chisholm’s book is “Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound.” Credit: Dave Chisholm and Z2 Comics.
Chisholm, who is a trumpet player himself, says he’s learned some valuable lessons from Davis, including how to solve problems in both musical and non-musical situations.
“He gives out advice that's just beautifully, Yoda-like strange advice, where he's like, ‘Don't play the first thing that comes to your mind. Let that first thing go past you, and then play the next thing that comes to mind. Don't just settle for the first solution.’”
He continues, “He's always rolling with the punches. He's always a yes. He's always accepting those circumstances as they are and then moves forward from there, as opposed to being upset that things are wrong, or are different than he expected them to be, and then moves forward in a way that is unpredictable from this side. And then once you're past that, you look back and you're like, ‘That was inevitable, wasn't it?’ And it's really, really magical and amazing.”