[15] John Rook's final interview, a comprehensive overview of his entire life and career, was broadcast on Marcus Singletary's Far Out Flavors podcast on December 15, 2015.
Topics included breaking into radio, meeting Mick Jagger, Ted Kennedy, and The Beatles, and the emergence of Republican Donald Trump as a viable presidential candidate.
[16] Rook was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, and attended high school in Nebraska, before moving to California in the mid-1950s to take acting classes with Natalie Wood, Nick Adams and Sal Mineo, at the Pasadena Playhouse.
[17] He spent much of his time guiding the career of his closest friend, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend, Eddie Cochran,[18][19] one of the artists on Liberty Records, where Rook worked in the mailroom.
In return for sponsoring The Rolling Stones on their first US tour, prior to their initial American success in 1964, Rook gained exclusive rights to the Beatles first appearance in Pittsburgh.
His premature debut of “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James and the Shondells in 1968, for instance, made sufficient impact for Roulette Records to change the timing of the single's release.
In 1986, Rook's group signed on an FM facility, KEYF-FM at 101.1 in the Spokane metro, and purchased two stations: KEYW-FM 98.3 in Pasco, Washington and KEYV-FM 93.1 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
[53] In 2006, singer Pat Boone talked with Rook about his disappointment at not being included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, even though he amassed five #1 records in the first two years Billboard magazine printed its Hot 100, with a total of 65 entries on that national chart in the 1950s and 1960s.
[54][55] Rook recognized that Boone's early records were responsible for introducing mass appeal audiences to several songs popularized by R&B performers, which were not played on mainstream radio, and was motivated to find another association for seminal artists like Boone, or the many big hit makers of the pop standards era such as Frank Sinatra, Frankie Laine, Jo Stafford, Joni James, Perry Como, Patti Page and Bing Crosby, performers who achieved their popularity in the period between big band music and rock and roll.
With no viable alternative, he founded the "Hit Parade Hall of Fame", with the sole criterion being that an artist have at least two nationally charted top 10 songs from any genre as tallied in either Billboard or Cashbox.
[15] Nominees were selected each year by a panel of professionals from the radio and records industry[56] including former presidents of major American record labels such as Russ Regan, Barney Ales, Ron Alexenburg, Al Coury and Bob Fead; popular radio personalities Rick Dees, Scott Shannon, Larry Lujack, Red Robinson, Wink Martindale, George Klein and Rollye James; and broadcasting executives Erica Farber, Kent Burkhart, Ed Salamon, Jerry Osborne, John Gehron and Jim Long.
Besides Boone, initial hit makers inducted in 2007 who had not been honored by other musical halls of fame included Paul Anka, Teresa Brewer, Chubby Checker, Jimmy Clanton, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Connie Francis, Johnny Mathis, Patti Page, Johnnie Ray, Neil Sedaka, and Frank Sinatra.