"cheerful" "Dallas Blues" "Saint Louis Blues"

"St. Louis Blues" and "Dallas Blues" have sad lyrics. ("Dallas Blues" was originally an instrumental, and had lyrics added in 1918.)

I don't know of any evidence that Ayer and Brown thought of "Oh You Beautiful Doll" as a blues number, and Ayer's use of the 12-bar form in part of it could have been inspired by a 12-bar blues he heard or a 12-bar non-blues he heard.

"Memphis Blues" was published as an instrumental in 1912, and words were added to it the following year by a guy who didn't know Handy, as far as we know didn't know much about blues music, and seemed to be more or less trying to write another "Alexander's Ragtime Band."

"So by 1908 the public... called it 'blues'..." I don't know of any evidence that anyone was thinking there was a type of music they called "blues" music before 1909. (What people called blues music, starting in about 1909, included songs that predated 1909.) Handy's 1926 book claims that the idea of blues music as a type of music was known in various states during the year 1910, but only arose shortly before 1910. The other evidence we have (Kid Love playing "Easton Blues" in Texas in 1910, for instance) supports that book's claim.

We don't know why the first edition of Hoffmann's "I'm Alabama Bound" gave the alternative title "The Alabama Blues," but "I'm Alabama Bound" was a cousin of the blues songs, so maybe that had to do with it. In general it was very rare to refer to "Alabama Bound" as "The Alabama Blues," but note the claim in print by Harrison Smith, who knew Jelly Roll Morton and was born in 1893, that "Jelly did not write... Don't You Leave Me Here (Alabama Blues)," and also note the chord progression of the first strain of "Alabama Blues" by the Three Stripped Gears (composer credit to the band's mandolinist Ralph Durden, who was likely born in Fulton County, GA in about 1897).