"Blues" music was created to chase away gloom... The Happy-go-lucky songs of the Southern Negro we call "Blues" - W. C. Handy, 1919. "The Father of the Blues" points out that you've got to be happy if you want to sing the Blues. Quoted by Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff in "They Cert'ly Sound Good To Me: Sheet Music, Southern Vaudeville, And The Commercial Ascendancy Of The Blues" in Ramblin' On My Mind, David Evans, ed