Iconic Women of Country Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Iconic Women of Country Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 27, 2025

Mercury Studios, the label formerly known as Eagle Rock Entertainment, seems to be getting into the country music business after years of focusing on more mainstream rock acts, like their long series of "SD Blu-rays" of Rolling Stones concert performances. Just in the past couple of weeks, Mercury has sent this disc, the already reviewed Still Playin' Possum: Music and Memories of George Jones and the soon to be reviewed Wynonna: Concert From My Place, all of which suggest Mercury may be exploring new genres. As with both of the other linked titles, this evidently aired on PBS and is more of a documentary than a concert video, though there are certainly snippets of songs included. The fact that "current" female country music icons are utilized to discuss "historical" female country music icons certainly gives this documentary a really unique and insightful perspective, and there are a number of passing comments that allude to the difficulty of women becoming successful in a male dominated industry. What becomes apparent, however, is that female country music artists were active and actually quite successful all along, even if various record companies didn't know quite what to do with them, for at least a little while.

As can perhaps be gleaned by parsing through the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review, this documentary's title could reasonably refer both to "vintage" performers like Patsy Cline or Loretta Lynn, as well as contemporary superstars like Wynonna or Trisha Yearwood. The contemporary artists are used to both introduce and then comment on old clips of stars of yesteryear (including still living legends like Dolly Parton). The "historical" artists covered are:

• Tammy Wynette
• Kitty Wells
• Dottie West
• Patsy Montana
• Loretta Lynn
• Barbara Mandrell
• Jean Shepard
• Lynn Anderson
• Patsy Cline
• Jeannie C. Riley
• Connie Smith
• Brenda Lee
• Dolly Parton
• Minnie Pearl

Iconic Women of Country Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Iconic Women of Country is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Mercury Studios with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer (largely) in 1.78:1 (some vintage video is presented in 1.33:1). This is a somewhat variable looking presentation by default, since the documentary tends to ping pong back and forth between newly recorded interview segments and a lot of older archival video. The new segments typically look sharp as a tack, with commendable detailing and a nicely suffused palette. Understandably, the archival material can be fairly shoddy looking by comparison, with many snippets obviously sourced from problematic older videotape.

Iconic Women of Country Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Iconic Women of Country features an LPCM 2.0 track that delivers everything without any problems, but also without much real stereo separation, probably due in part to what I assume are original mono audio sources on most if not all of the archival video. The biggest problem for ardent country music fans here won't be the actual audio quality, but probably the fact that music is used intermittently and typically in edited fashion. All spoken material is delivered cleanly and clearly. No subtitles are available.

Iconic Women of Country Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This is a bare bones disc without any supplementary content.

Iconic Women of Country Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This piece doesn't even run for a full hour, which may inherently suggest that there are both artists left uncovered and details about the covered artists left unrevealed here, so this probably best accepted as an introduction to a fascinating subject rather than an authoritative compendium. A lot of the vintage clips are quite enjoyable, and show that despite apparent perceptions country music has always had a place on mainstream broadcast television. The contemporary interviews are also rather pointed at times as they get into the vagaries of the music industry in general and country music in particular. Technical merits are generally solid, with an understanding that vintage video sources offer pretty variant quality. With caveats noted, Iconic Women of Country comes Recommended.