History of CBS Records 30th Street Studio NYC (many pictures)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by DMortensen, Oct 21, 2014.

  1. rsimms3

    rsimms3 New Member

    First, let me apologize. I have not read this particular thread front to back. I was linked here in a roundabout way from another forum. I did skim the entire thread looking for pictures.

    My interest lies in these two pictures. I recently purchased a record lathe that was located in Milwaukee, WI. I have started some restoration work on it, posting some pictures of my progress. That lead to a link to the first of the two pictures above. I have not found any other information on this particular lathe, the maker, or it's origins but it looks like the one pictured above. I have the microscope as well, but was removed to make room for restoration work. Unfortunately the cutting head and carriage were not included and have not been found by the previous owner. Here's a link to the LatheTroll.com thread that I started that lead me here:
    http://lathetrolls.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6315

    Any additional information, pictures, history, or anything anyone knows would be great to hear. Also, if anyone would like pictures from me, feel free to contact me. Thanks again for this great thread!
     
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  2. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    mikegray's post above this one has a quote but no text; he seems to be having a problem getting in the swim of posting here that no amount of handholding is solving yet, so here are his comments about my post quoted above:

    "1) Street Scene - Certainly recorded in Liederkranz February 1947 (or Studio X as it's listed in the session schedules); in the final picture the personnel are conductor Maurice Abravanel, Weill, and the session producer, Charles O'Connell;

    "2) Sinatra-in-1947 - Liederkranz again, October 22, 1947. The music is 'Laura', by Raskin/Mercer.
    In the both shots you can see FS, then arranger Richard Jones, and Stordahl at the podium."

    Mike and I have talked several times now (he found me somehow after reading this thread), and he is truly a fountain of information that is relevant to us and is interested in spreading the word.

    Here is a discography that he's been working on for a lot of years

    http://classical-discography.org

    If you go to the Search page, enter "30th St" in Place, then scroll down to the bottom to "Sort by", then go way to the bottom of the pulldown menu to "Date", you get a nice, ordered listing of classical sessions (Mike's interest) and the performers, works recorded, 78 and full matrix numbers, album and CD catalog numbers, and whatever else he's found for those recordings. It covers several labels so you can look up non-CBS stuff, too.

    In the absence of his active postings, I think giving him some "likes" on that empty post would be a beginning of the appreciation I know we are going to feel for him shortly, and maybe set a record for likes for an empty post...

    He has sent me some stuff that will contribute mightily to our understanding of Fred Plaut's role and accomplishments in the studio and company, as well as Howard Scott (who Mike interviewed while he was still alive) and will set the record straight about a lot of things.

    Since this post is more about Mike than me, I'll return in a minute with the update that I've been planning to write for some time but am just getting around to now that I have lots of other stuff to do.
     
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  3. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    So although I've not been posting here, I've not been idle in terms of 30th St research.

    My main concern is trying to organize the mass of data that I've collected and am collecting into a unified whole, and I mentioned the idea of a database on the last page. Several people have offered initial advice about that, and it turns out that my recently retired neighbors across the street were relational database specialists for several very huge companies that you've heard of.

    I showed the neighbors part of this project at our New Year's Eve gathering, and these two told me of their work history (which I hadn't quite previously known) and offered to at least discuss it with me.

    We've gotten together three times now since then, and they have really taken the ball and run with it in terms of very precisely defining the back end part. That is the fields and very exact definitions of what kinds of data goes in those fields, which is a much larger task than I imagined. He is almost done with a document that I'll be able to show you for your discussion and opinions, but not quite yet.

    At our last meeting, my son the computer programmer came in to talk about designing the front end, which is the data entry methodology and once that's done, the user interface for people interested in seeing permutations of the data. He is making me understand what a huge job that part will be, too, so for those who have offered comments there may be an opportunity to help with that. I don't know at this moment what "help" means in that context, either.

    I've done some more work on the spreadsheet, although that is going to stop until we get the database design more done because even though the spreadsheet can apparently be incorporated into the database, there is not full information for each AFM entry (for example) in the spreadsheet so all those sessions will have to be revisited anyway.

    This Saturday and Sunday, and perhaps Thursday and Friday, I have some enforced mostly idle time at work where I can work some more on the Plaut pictures. I'll be going through the index and adding ID's to the picture captions so that we have a better starting place to find the unknown people in the pictures and have a better idea of what the sessions they are working on are and that will help know when they took place, maybe. That is what I did with the pictures in 2014, but this last batch is 8x as much and I'm barely started so far. After this weekend I hope to have more done on that.

    Now I need to get ready for that work. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves....
     
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  4. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Now we'll get into Mike Gray's collected information.

    Here is an article in the NYT from what looks like the front page but might be the front page of the Real Estate section.

    [​IMG]

    As you can read, it announces the purchase of the 799 7th Ave building by CBS, after they've been tenants since 1939.

    I think it's interesting because they are also in process or getting ready to purchase 30th St., so there was a considerable expansion and investment going on after the war as their fortunes increased. I don't have the permutations of the Columbia corporation memorized, but it's possible that the original builder (Brunswick) was a lineal predecessor of CBS. There were a bunch.

    The other picture kind of bookends the first one in that it is the typewritten text of a January 15, 1981 announcement in the NYT that 30th St. would be sold to build an apartment house, and that an opposition group led by Ray Moore, president of the NYC chapter of NARAS, was being formed to fight the sale.

    [​IMG]

    Ray Moore was also an engineer at CBS.
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2016
  5. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Hello, rsimms3,

    That sounds like a fun project and your progress pictures and video are neat.

    I wish I had more information for you. I had thought I'd posted those pics to my Friends of the 30th St studio group as well as here, and I thought there was a spirited discussion arguing who that fellow is (one guy thought it was for sure Peter Goldmark while others were equally sure it wasn't, but I don't recall discussion about what kind of lathe it was.

    Maybe lukpac remembers or has that conversation and can enlighten us?

    I'll look in my spare time to see if there was further discussion about the lathe. There are a couple of mastering engineers in the group, so it would not be surprising if there was an ID of it.

    Good luck!
    Dan
     
  6. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    Well . . . given that Decca, in its first two years (1934-36) in existence had their New York studios at 799 Seventh Avenue (prior to that label's move to 50 West 57th Street), and Decca's formation was from people formerly connected with Brunswick (i.e. Jack Kapp), this would apparently have been Brunswick BARC (before its 1931 acquisition by American Record Corporation - the firm that was bought by CBS in late 1938). Unless they meant the actual Brunswick-Balke-Callender concern that manufactured bowling equipment, and from which the record label was originally derived. As well, this purchase by Columbia of 799 Seventh preceded by a few months the corporate name change to Columbia Records, Inc. It was also at the point they were building a new Hollywood pressing plant at 8723 Alden Drive, to replace the ARC-era pressing plant (and, before 1940, occasional recording studio) at 6626 Romaine Street that had been in operation since 1935.
     
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  7. rsimms3

    rsimms3 New Member

    Thanks for the response and any information you come across. It's a strange beast for sure. No identifiable markings on it and no pictures I've ever found outside of yours. There's a bit of a gap between the folks who worked in the early days of sound engineering and new folks getting into the hobby/trade. Threads like this one are are really important on preserving this history.
     
  8. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    I don't think we ever figured out who it was. Tom Fine thought it was Peter Goldmark, but I argued it wasn't.

    The guy in question:

    [​IMG]

    Goldmark:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Other than not being Goldmark, I'm not sure who it is.
     
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  9. Dan C

    Dan C Forum Fotographer

    Location:
    The West
    Still sad to read that 1981 story even after all these years. Imagine what could've been if NYC Landmarks had actually shown some resolve. What's worse is Landmarks is even less effective now after years of gutting by build-hungry administrations.

    dan c
     
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  10. TheIncredibleHoke

    TheIncredibleHoke Dachshund Dog Dad

    Location:
    Brooklyn, NY
    Man, this thread has been AMAZING for me to read. I actually work in the "Verizon Building." NYU owns half of it and my office is on the 6th floor. It's funny, b/c my friend Rupi was the one that took the picture of the guy sunbathing in the thong several pages back.

    Thank you so much for this thread, I'll never be able to walk to my office without thinking of all the amazing musicians and performers who have been on this street.
     
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  11. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Wow, that's pretty cool!

    Do you know of any historical photos of events on the street or in your building that might show the church in the background? That's one category of pics that I've been trying and completely failing at finding. There must be a bunch scattered around in the world that are waiting for us....

    As your last paragraph indicates, it must have been incredible to live there and see these amazing people come and go, although granted that New Yorkers are generally pretty blasé about that sort of thing.

    Who wouldn't flip at seeing Elizabeth Taylor on their street?
     
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  12. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Been thinking about your post during this part of my weekend of enforced paid idleness which has allowed me to finally start in earnest on ID'ing people in the latest batch of Plaut pics (more on that in a minute):

    One of the things that I've wanted to do from Day 1 of this project is to show people on your block (the block of the studio) what happened for 30 years in their neighborhood and what an extraordinary time it was there during an extraordinary period of time in NYC's history.

    New York was the leading city in the world in many cultural aspects, head and shoulders above anywhere else without question. Europe and Asia had been decimated or severely damaged in the world war. Before the war, intelligentsia and wealthy people had fled those places and in many cases come to New York. Now that the war was over, others were free to join those who were already here. New York was THE happening city on earth, and Columbia was in a lot of ways the happening label with facilities that were superior in some particulars.

    As we've seen, many of the most talented people in many fields found themselves at one time or another in that little block to be recorded doing their thing, or to be with someone they knew or loved while they were being recorded doing their thing, or to observe and document for the immediate world and for the ages someone in one of those categories. There are a ton of pictures showing all of that, and like I said I'm working on the newest batch to me and finding lots of cool stuff that I hope to start showing soon.

    As I said, I think it would be fun to show this to the neighbors, but that hasn't worked out yet. So your note makes me ask:

    Does your building have any kind of meeting space where 50 or so people could congregate and look at pictures projected on a wall or screen? I can bring a pretty tiny projector that doesn't use much electricity (300 or fewer watts) and gives a usable and enjoyable image when it's about 8' wide or so. The room should be capable of being darkish.

    We could invite people from this thread, too, maybe? That has had mixed results in the past, but I bet there'd a be a couple that would enjoy seeing the pictures in the original block. And I'm always open to meeting people who are interested in history, since I love and am a student of NYC history which is one reason why this thread has been so much fun for me.

    Let me know your thoughts; you can PM me if you are shy about posting any more details here. No, I don't know when I'll come back there, maybe next Fall, although sooner would be nice if schedule allows. I don't like hot weather, though, so that will limit the possibilities. Also limit the possibility of seeing thong guy...
     
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  13. 2xUeL

    2xUeL Forum Philosopher

    Location:
    Albany, NY
    :love:
     
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  14. Murphy13

    Murphy13 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland
    Dan, this may have been asked. You ever thought about hooking up with a book editor and formally putting together a publication (similar to this http://www.recordingthebeatles.com/)? This would be a biggie in Japan. Many music fans would go nuts for all this info
     
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  15. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    That seems like a daunting, all-consuming task and I'm afraid to want to consider it. A friend put an editor in contact with me last summer and I didn't reply to the editor's query as I totally wasn't ready. And am not now. It seems like a Sisyphusian task.

    This is the second time in a week that the extraordinary Recording The Beatles book has come up in this context. Those guys achieved an incredible feat IMO. The last time I was Chair of our AES Section we presented them in a talk here and I got to have dinner with and introduce them at the meeting, which was full beyond overflowing, and I bought the book afterwards. Reading it was one jaw-dropping discovery after another.

    Wasn't that book more than 10 years in the making? And I think they were working pretty full-time on it. I can work on this thread a little or a lot, and it doesn't seem to go away or suffer too much in my absence.

    As I said earlier here, for now I'm only doing this because I can and want to find out how much we can learn while it's still learnable. To namecheck Mike Gray again, he started doing this when most of the principals were still alive and talking. It's harder now that many of them are gone, and will be much harder 20 years from now. I'm full of admiration for him and others like Dave Simon who have found out so much for us to appreciate. And lukpac and many others here who have contributed so much to the story.

    My wife and family enjoy doing jigsaw puzzles, which after the first one I've only seen as a waste of time; for me, this is a jigsaw puzzle that will stay appreciated after it's solved and not just while it's being put together. If it ever gets fully solved, that is.

    One of the reasons I like audio is because there's literally no end to how much you can learn or how much there is still to be known, even in the part that's been someone's specialty for over 40 years, like me and sound reinforcement. There's always more to find out, and the process of this thread has been full of surprising discoveries. Like the mirrors.

    I'm having my little real-life detective saga and am happy to be bringing you along with me.
     
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  16. Murphy13

    Murphy13 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland

    Glad it is such a fun project. The Beatles book is basically, more or less with some historical background of AR Studios, covering only 8 years. Heck, we are lucky to see two releases in an 8 year period nowadays from musicians.
     
  17. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Don't forget the little detail where they found all this EMI-built recording gear (they built almost everything but the tape decks, and maybe even those early on) which was unlabeled because everyone of the staff engineers knew what it was for. That common knowledge mostly disappeared over the years but pictures clearly show it in use at the Beatles sessions.

    So these two guys who were nobody in the world found old bits in rubbish heaps and basements and put it together, repaired it so it would work, and figured out how to use it and what it did and basically included owners manuals in the book.

    Not to mention finding out anything worth knowing about how each and every session went down and putting that in a cohesive form.

    AFAIC they did a singular achievement, equal in our world to Hillary and Tensing Norgay climbing Everest. That was a giant project and resulted in a giant book.

    My opinion.
     
  18. Murphy13

    Murphy13 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland
    I agree. I was lucky enough to get one of the first edition signed copies. I do have to say, from a person who has a small home studio and does "stock" music from time to time, the studio hands back in the day were "engineers" in the truest sense of the word. So much today is plug and play with a easy user interface. They were real pioneers in the world of recording. CBS/Columbia, RCA Nashville had the best sound, imo, back in those days. The rooms themselves were probably the most important technical aspect of all those great records. Of course, you have nothing without great musicians.
     
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  19. TheIncredibleHoke

    TheIncredibleHoke Dachshund Dog Dad

    Location:
    Brooklyn, NY
    Ha, yeah that guy...

    It's funny, I've been thinking abut this post so much since discovering it. There are a few music fans/jazz people I work with who I've told about this thread. Of course, they think it's really cool. I'm afraid most people would think I'm nuts. :) However, let me ponder more on this. There has to be a neighborhood association or something that might be interested in this. And we do have space in our building for an after hours presentation - would have to work through permission issues though.

    One caveat about this neighborhood though, it that is has a lot of younger people who could care less about cool, historical things like this. But I'm sure that there are a lot of people in the neighborhood who would be interested. There's even one guy in my office who has a print of the famous photo "A Great Day in Harlem" in his office. I haven't gotten a chance to tell him about the 30th St. studio yet, but I'm sure he'll be psyched.

    I will be watching this thread with great interest and if I can help set something up, I would totally be willing.
     
  20. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    Thanks for this nice comment and its promise of the potential for a possibility.

    Regarding the people in the neighborhood: 3 years ago I was there in part to have the first Friends of the 30th St Studio meeting at which I presented lifetime achievement awards to the photographer Don Hunstein there in NYC and simultaneously in Seattle to Frank Laico via GoToMeeting hookup with the group present in NYC.

    I was there a few weeks before the meeting, and decided to do some research in that block. I visited one day and took down addresses of every building that seemed like it might have residents who might have been there before 1982 and which had less than 10 or so apartments. I printed up some blurbs describing the project and what I was looking for, along with a few pictures of the exterior of the building, along with my telephone number and email address, and mailed one to each apartment address (so 6 for a 6 unit building, etc.). Those that seemed to be single family I sent to Owner/Occupant. I sent out about 50 or 75.

    I got two emails back from young people who were not there at the relevant time but who were interested in the project and wanted to be kept informed. Both attended the GoToMeeting of our meeting that night, and I think came to one or more subsequent GoToMeetings that I did in the next year with Frank Laico before he died and before I stopped paying for that service.

    A third person called me who was a longtime resident of a house right across the street from the studio building (now condos), but who moved there the year or two after the teardown. He's the one who sent me the 1892 picture from King's Handbook that is in the OP, and we had a couple of nice talks. His house used to be a sanitarium for people suffering from tuberculosis, and they would live up on the roof in the "fresh" air. Weird, huh? I even found it in Wikipedia, so it must be true...

    So while I realize that the block and most of the City are composed of people who weren't there in the day, I wasn't there, either (well, actually I was definitely on that block walking past and saw the studio building but have no clear memory of it) so I think people can be interested without being of a certain age.

    Just like you, I think people who have a personal connection to the block can have a reaction to knowing what went on there and be at least minimally curious to find out more, and I'm happy to both create and satisfy curiosity, regardless of numbers. If you and one or two people were interested that would be enough for me, although obviously this kind of thing could be more fun with a few more people.

    OK?

    PS. I am quite happy with the potential for a possibility, given the amorphous predictability of my next presence there.

    PPS. The Armenian Church that used to be a co-occupant of the building with the Presbyterians for 30+ years is still over on 34th between 3rd and Lex or something like that. They have a cool picture of it that's in this thread, and I'd hoped they might be interested in something like you and I are talking about. I reached out to them before this last series of trips there and a guy called me back but didn't respond to my response and I got busy. It would be fun to see if they have any more pictures, too. They were having phone problems at the time; their main line was somebody's cell phone and that person changed service or something, so communication was a problem. Hope they have it figured out by now...
     
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  21. Murphy13

    Murphy13 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland
    Just a quick technical question. Did CBS/Columbia pretty much duplicate the recording equipment at each NY recording facility? Although many years prior, I thought I read that RCA used the Liederkranz building for early recording purposes. Obviously the equipment between the 20's and 40's was huge and a few overhauls, I'm sure, were made. Just curious
     
  22. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    These pictures were in the same folder as the Ray Noble pics, but I think they were on a different day in a different place with a different group. There are no studio shots that I can tell are the same session; I wasn't going to include those pics but will at the end.

    These first three are centered on the same guy who has a sort of brush crew cut and looks very familiar but I can't place him and he wasn't identified:

    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    The second fellow wasn't identified in the index, either.

    The glimpse of the control room window is tantalizing as a locational identifier, and the next picture

    [​IMG]

    tells us that it is indeed the old control room at 30th Street. That U-shaped window is really a godsend for picture sleuths.

    The last two for today were in the middle between the Ray Noble and crew cut man pictures. I *think* they are in 30th Street because there are visible pillars in the background with no arches, mirrors, or decorations on dark paint. Feel free to offer contrasting opinions, though.

    This is the arranger/composer Alec Wilder

    [​IMG]

    working on something with Mitch Miller. The index says that "A. Ellis Kohs is uncredited", which I think means he is in the picture but not named. I don't get that because the index was supposed to name everybody, but whatever.

    There are two almost identical pictures in the archive of these three people; the other one is a better picture of Mitch but Alec has his hand in front of his face, and the guy on the right looks almost exactly the same, which is to say that we can't see his face any better.

    I found an archive picture of A. Ellis Kohs in the USC alumni magazine or something, which announced his passing and had a picture of him that must have been taken near his retirement. This fellow MIGHT be the same one as in that picture, but I won't say for sure.

    Kohs was apparently a composer, too, and the crew cut guy looks like a composer as well. Would there have been a session with three composers present? That's why I assume these were two different sessions, but I have no idea.

    Enough for today, thanks for reading. As always, these pictures are from MSS 52, The Frederick and Rose Plaut Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University, gathered with the help of Richard Boursey and Emily Ferrigno, the very wonderful librarians.
     
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  23. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Most definitely 30th Street.

    However, you said there were 2 photos. Is there another?
     
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  24. DMortensen

    DMortensen Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Seattle, WA USA
    QUOTE="lukpac, post: 13781132, member: 6"]Most definitely 30th Street.

    However, you said there were 2 photos. Is there another?[/QUOTE]
    Crap, you'd think I could count as far as two.....

    [​IMG]

    This is Alec Wilder, I believe.

    And actually, there couldn't have been 2 photos unposted in that post because there was already 4 there. I meant that comment to come before the first Alec Wilder pic.

    However, since we are in a new post there is space for 4 more, so here we go on a different tangent.

    This handwritten note was on an index page in the files:

    [​IMG]

    You're seeing it as white lettering on black paper because I was taking pictures of the negatives and anything positive was reversed when I batch-reversed the negatives.

    The typed dates below were for Goddard's lifespan, and Vera Zorina was his glamorous and exotic wife.

    As I read it here and in a couple other places where it's similarly handwritten in the index, it's "Adjutan Theroux," and above Vera Zorina's name is a continuation saying "engineer".

    [​IMG]

    I'm pretty sure it's this fellow they are referring to every time the name is mentioned. I have not been able to find pictures of him outside the collection, or any kind of bio anywhere in Barney Google's collective wisdom. I'm guessing he was a very famous engineer in the days before Fred Plaut.

    Speaking of Fred, here's a shot of him at this same remote

    [​IMG]

    Fred looks so young that I'm guessing this is the mid-40's at the latest.

    Any thoughts what gear we are looking at? This seems to be before there were tape recorders so they are putting the signal through telephone lines either for live broadcast or going back to 799 to be recorded on discs. I guess.

    For those who are Opera buffs, here is a picture of the production:

    [​IMG]

    My guess is it's at the Metropolitan and they are discussing the dead guy in the foreground who was formerly in the chair, but that is a complete guess.

    Any ideas?
     
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  25. mdr30

    mdr30 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gothenburg, Sweden
    John Cage.
     
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