Like the Whisky with a CBGB chaser

YOU can’t stand outside and peek at the bands through a hole in the clapboard paneling anymore. That was patched up a few years back. The framed photos of local music luminaries that once hung over the bar are gone -- even that terrific shot of Black Flag bassist Chuck Dukowski, captured in mid-whoomph -- replaced with scattered pinup decor, enlarged exotica album covers and tattoo shop fliers. The pool table is back, though, joined by a dartboard and an upright piano that beckons people to its ivories as they vacate the not-nearly-as-forbidding-as-they-once-were restrooms.

But it’s still the same ol’ Doll Hut, even if this tiny 90-year-old, 49-capacity Anaheim room has undergone a couple of makeovers and ownership changes since its ‘90s heyday. Then it was run by Linda Jemison, a woman who achieved near-icon status among Orange County bands by providing a seven-nights-a-week oasis for live, original music when there were few places in O.C. for it.

It’s such a storied institution -- an O.C. equivalent of CBGB or the Whisky a Go Go, really -- that a section of band-decal-smothered wall from the Jemison era was displayed last year as part of “The Orange Groove,” an O.C. rock history exhibition at the Fullerton Museum Center.

Tim Clifton and Jill Samland knew they weren’t buying any ordinary bar last August; the couple was buying a legend. Still, it took Samland a little time to warm up to the Doll Hut’s clientele.

“Tim brought me here when we were dating, and I was really scared because of all the punk guys I saw with their mohawks,” she says. “I thought, ‘This is where people come to get their throat cut!’ But now I know everyone is really cool and nice. People here just aren’t concerned with how they look to other people.”

They did consider the Doll Hut’s bad relationship juju, though. Jemison bought the Doll Hut with her then-husband in 1989; they divorced several years later. (Jemison, who now lives in the Midwest, subsequently rechristened the bar Linda’s Doll Hut.)

Another couple, Blue and Anthony Castaneda, took it over in 2001; their marriage also splintered.

“We’d been warned,” Samland says. “They do say we’re cursed and that we’ll end up apart. But even though we’re not married, we’re still pretty strong.”

Clifton smiles and nods in agreement.

Clifton, who works as a Long Beach longshoreman, has big dreams for his club -- let him ramble and he’ll tell you of one day expanding the bar, having bands on an outdoor stage on the weekends, CD compilations, a concert hall, maybe even opening up a chain of Doll Huts around the country.

But before any of that can happen, he has to keep hosting the kinds of punk, rockabilly and countrified roots bands that helped build the Hut’s rep.

Booker Chris Hulett makes sure that’s covered. “We always want to keep it Doll Hut style,” says Hulett, “sticking to the music that the Doll Hut is known for. And it’s working out -- we’re certainly not hurting for bands.”

ONE recent Saturday featured a double bill of the Dynotones, an Orange surf band, and the Western swing of Big Sandy & His Fly Rite Boys. For Anaheim native Robert “Big Sandy” Williams, a night at the Doll Hut may as well be a night spent with good friends in his living room. A three-minute chat is constantly interrupted by a steady stream of well-wishers.

“We had a regular weekly gig here about 15 years ago,” says Williams, who’s just returned from a series of shows in the Midwest. “The Doll Hut is really our hometown hangout. I met and broke up with old girlfriends here, but it’s always a good place to come back to.”

With the Fly Rite Boys headlining, that evening’s crowd looks as if they’ve arrived straight from the Hootenanny, even though that annual O.C. roots-punk fest doesn’t go off until the summer (indeed, there may never have been a Hootenanny had the Doll Hut not created a haunt for the retro-smitten masses first).

There are 50-ish men in slick, pomaded hair, with Dickies jackets barely obscuring their car club T-shirts -- wallet chains hang down almost to their rolled-up jean cuffs. There are women in their 20s who look like they’re here for a Bettie Page look-alike contest, but with the added element of color tattoos tagging up their arms, from their shoulders to just past their elbows. When the music’s on, the bartender, Lulu, can’t seem to pour the Pabst Blue Ribbon fast enough.

“We’re all about live entertainment and original music,” Clifton says. “We have just a few rules: Come in, have fun and express yourself, but don’t kick anyone’s teeth in.”

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Rich Kane may be reached at weekend@latimes.com.

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The Doll Hut

Where: 107 S. Adams St., Anaheim

When: 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.; live music most nights

Price: Covers from $5 to $10

Info: (714) 533-1286; www.dollhut.com