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***1/2 LOVERLY MUSIC

THE SINGLES (1997-1999)

(Loverly)

Since the early ’90s, Memphis music fanatic Ed Porter has made his Loverly Music imprint home to music that grows wild, woolly, and weird in the fertile soil of his own backyard. He embarked on his mission in 1993 by releasing 45 rpm singles — and only 45 rpm singles — of Memphis’s fringe dwellers because he liked the idea of embracing something (and somebody) that had been left behind. Eventually, though, he broke down and issued a pair of double-length albums that collected Loverly’s singles output on CD. Listening to those volumes was like accidentally tuning in to some outlaw radio station haunted by the grinning ghosts of wildman disc jockey Dewey Phillips and dozens of half-forgotten one-hit wonders, scam artists, freak-show extroverts, and professional crackpots.

— Jonathan Perry