Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
WAITSBURG - It seems there's no shortage of talent - or civic mindedness, for that matter - in the family of Doris Huffman (Ruff), of Waitsburg. Huffman recently used her artistic talents to create a painting for Waitsburg's Town Hall. Daughter Deanna Tipton - an accomplished singer and actress who was recently an extra on the remake of Dallas - performed at the Plaza Theater in 2012. Her stand-up comedy/music routine raised $1,600 for Town Hall maintenance. And most recently, Huffman's nephew, retired Air Force Band trumpeter Jon Ruff, played on the album that won the Best Latin Tropical Album Grammy at the 2014 awards in January.
Huffman and her brother Ralph Ruff both graduated from Wa-Hi before attending college at Eastern Washington College in Cheney, Wash. Ruff later moved to the Bay area, where he started his family.
Ralph Ruff's son, Jon, graduated high school in Calif. and joined the Air Force after graduation. Ruff played trumpet with The United States Air Force Band of the Golden West in the San Francisco Bay area at Travis Air Force Base, California. The band of about 60 musicians performs at civilian events throughout California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. They support the Air Force in over 250 performances a year, playing for 1.5 million listeners.
According to Huffman, Ruff toured the country and traveled overseas with the band. He has had the honor of playing for eight different presidents. "When the band would go on tour, John would always encourage them to come to Walla Walla so we could see them," said Huffman, who recalls attending their concerts at both Cordiner Hall and Walla Walla Community College. "The only bad thing was that I don't like people making a big fuss over me and he'd always make us stand up and introduce us."
After retirement from the Air Force, Ruff connected with Christian Tumalan and Steffen Kuehn, co-founders of a new San Francisco based Latin band called Pacific Mambo Orchestra. The 19-piece big band started playing gigs in the Bay area just three years ago. Unlike other artists that are backed by big labels, Keuhn and Tumalan used the crowd- funding website Kickstarter to raise the money to record their first album. Their self- titled album was produced last year and went on to win the Best Tropical Latin Album; beating out Marc Anthony's "3.0" salsa album as well as albums by other well- known Latin musicians.
"His mother was a music teacher in Calif. and her bands always won competitions. She was a real taskmaster at making him practice," said Huffman. "It sure paid off. He's really good."
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