Upon this rock, a scene was built

Orange County is the Orange Curtain, the wags say, a gulag of strip malls far from the vibrant cultural currents of Los Angeles. Fox’s sexy soap “The O.C.” hasn’t burnished the rep either, what with all of those sexed-up young things and a middle-aged patriarch who likes to surf in his spare time.

Which is why the Fullerton Museum Center’s exhibition “The Orange Groove: Orange County’s Rock ‘n’ Roll History,” is a necessary corrective to the cultural misperceptions about this maligned region. The display, a sweeping survey of the county’s musical heritage that features rare memorabilia, handbills, musical gear and other ephemera, places Orange Country in its proper historical context as the home of some important rock musicians and a breeding ground for surf music, a genre that’s synonymous with Southern California -- but, alas, not necessarily Orange County.

Perhaps it’s because Orange County is regarded by many as the state’s capital of conservatism, a place where the apotheosis of artistic expression is Disneyland. But according to the show’s curator, Jim Washburn, Orange County’s conservative philosophy actually gave a leg up to the nascent music scene.

“For a while, the conservative mind-set worked to the scene’s advantage,” says Washburn, a veteran music journalist and a contributing editor for the OC Weekly. “There was this whole notion of letting the market determine everything, of eliminating Big Brother. If someone wanted to rent a hall for a concert, so be it.”

As the exhibition makes clear, the region’s most important musical figure was a free-market entrepreneur: Leo Fender, who invented the solid-body electric guitar out of his Fullerton shop. In the 1950s Fender began shilling his Stratocaster guitar to local musicians to advertise his product, and one of them, Dick Dale, became O.C.’s first local rock hero. The Balboa resident, who bashed out his jittery surf guitar hits “Let’s Go Trippin’ ” and “Miserlou” on a custom-made, left-handed Fender Strat, launched an O.C. surf movement.

Suddenly, everyone was saving up to buy a Fender guitar so they could start a band. Fifteen-minute O.C. surf groups such as the Blazers, the Rhythm Rockers and Santa Ana’s the Chantays played key venues such as the Rendezvous Ballroom on the Balboa peninsula and the Pavalon in Huntington Beach. The Chantays’ “Pipeline” became the first O.C.-bred national hit, selling more than a million copies in 1963. “We had a big fan base in Orange County,” says the Chantays’ Bob Spikard, a Santa Ana native. “We played the Rendezvous Ballroom for two years straight.”

Meanwhile, Spikard’s high school classmates Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield were emulating the gritty vocals of L.A. R&B; act Don and Dewey and performing locally as the Righteous Brothers. The duo became the most successful musical duo to emerge from Orange Country, with Top 10 hits “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “Unchained Melody” and “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration.” “The Orange Groove” has two of Medley and Hatfield’s stage suits on display, as well as rare album covers, some canceled checks for local gigs and a video loop of TV performances.

But it’s the obscurantist strain in “The Orange Groove” that makes it such a revelation. There is significant display space devoted to Kathy Marshall, for example. Virtually unknown today, she was a crackerjack in her early-’60s heyday, the “Queen of the Surf Guitar” who matched licks onstage with Dale and other guitarists.

“Kathy was an amazing player, but terribly shy,” Washburn says. “She used to throw up before going on stage.”

Tracking down Marshall was one of Washburn’s most challenging quests: “I couldn’t find her anywhere,” he says. “Finally, on a tip, I looked in the phone book for Marshall Advertising, and she answered the phone. It was a half-mile from my house in Costa Mesa.”

When the Beatles relegated surf music to obscure status in 1964, Orange County moved through all of the requisite developments in rock -- the psychedelic movement, the singer-songwriter coffeehouses (where Fullerton natives Jackson Browne and Tim Buckley first performed) and the Marshall stack-heavy riffage of local acts like the Stack and Birtha. One of “The Orange Groove’s” most impressive items is a large mural of a scene including the Acropolis from the Balboa coffeehouse the Prisoner of Socrates, where local folkies Steve Gillette and Tim Nelson performed. “It was being used as an oil-drip pan when I found it,” says Washburn. “Fortunately, the owner had a nice car.”

Punk music is arguably Orange County’s most culturally significant export, but it began modestly. “There were no places to play,” says Jim Guerinot. The manager of O.C. bands No Doubt, the Offspring and Social Distortion, Guerinot began his career promoting shows in Fullerton in the early 1980s. “It was a very small scene. Bands would play in roller rinks, but most of those closed.” Guerinot remembers mounting shows by Social D and TSOL at Fullerton Junior College, both of which were shut down by the police.

That history of opposition runs through “The Orange Groove”; it is the subtext of a scene that thrived on the push and pull of propriety and rebellion. But like all insurgencies, the fires cooled down to embers by the ‘90s, and now O.C.’s music scene is much like the rest of the country’s, a combination of under-the-radar clubs and mainstream venues such as the House of Blues.

“Liability became a problem, and the scene got lawyer-ed up,” Washburn said. “But there’s still plenty of good music here. You just have to know where to look.”

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Marc Weingarten can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.

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The Orange Groove

Orange County’s Rock ‘n’ Roll History

What: Exhibition featuring pop music ephemera

Where: Fullerton Museum Center, 301 N. Pomona Ave., Fullerton

When: Noon-4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; noon-8 p.m. Thursday

Price: $4; $3 for students and seniors; $1 for children

Info: (714) 738-6545