Two From Bill Monroe

''I never wrote a tune in my life,'' Mr. Monroe once said. ''All that music's in the air around you all the time. I was just the first one to reach up and pull it out.''

--

In 1985, someone broke into his home and smashed the 1923 Gibson F-5 mandolin he had been playing for four decades; technicians at Gibson Guitars spent three months reassembling it with microscopes and tweezers.