[10] A second edition of the song, also for piano solo, uses the same twenty-bar theme but precedes it with an independent twelve-bar melody.

In 1918, a third version appeared, for voice and piano, with lyrics by Lloyd Garrett[11][12] to express the singer's longing for Dallas: There's a place I know, folks won't pass me by Dallas, Texas, that's the town, I cry, oh hear me cry And I'm going back, going back to stay there 'til I die, until I die The song version uses the two themes of the second version, but reduces the eight-bar repeat on the second theme, so both are twelve-bar.

[11] No date is found for the actual composition of "Dallas Blues" but Samuel Charters, who interviewed Wand for his book The Country Blues (1959), states that Wand took the tune to a piano-playing friend, Annabelle Robbins, who arranged the music for him.

[13] Charters added that the title came from one of Wand's father's workmen who remarked that the tune gave him the blues to go back to Dallas.

In any case, within weeks of its publication it was heard the length of the Mississippi River,[14] and its influence on all the blues music that followed is well documented.