Claudia Scott is an English/ Norwegian songwriter, musician and producer. She was born in Newcastle, UK and lived her first 6 years in London before moving with her family to Bergen, Norway.
She is a third generation musician and already at 11 she recorded with her father, Clive Scott. The result was in fact Norway’s first country music album and she also toured with him in the UK and Norway.
But it was first when she became part of the trio Claudia -Big Hand – Casino that she embarked on a professional career that has lasted till this day.
Both Ottar “Big Hand” Johansen and Casino Steel had been recording artists for years when the trio was founded in 1983, Ottar as the leading Norwegian country artist through the seventies, Casino as a central artist in English punk in the mid-seventies with his role in Hollywood Brats and The Boys and later with a series of duo albums with singer/actor Gary Holton.
Claudia – Big Hand – Casino released three albums and was awarded the Spellemannprisen (Norwegian Grammy) for the third, “Oh yeah!”, released in 1985.
In 1986 Claudia was involved in the quartet CCCP, short for Carlene Carter (June Carter’s daughter), Claudia Scott, Casino Steel and John Payne, recording one album.
In 1988 Claudia and Casino released “Scott & Steel”, before relocating to Los Angeles.
All albums would fall inside the category that we now call “Americana” and in 2022 Claudia – Big Hand – Casino´s debut album, “Will The Circle Be Unbroken”, was voted as one of 15 key albums in Norwegian Americana’s history following a vote initiated by Norsk Americana Forum, the Norwegian version of Americana Music Association.
While in LA Claudia recorded her debut solo album, “Flower & Thorns”, released in 1992, spearheaded by the song “Heard You On My Radio”. The song ended up being heard on everybody’s radio, going all the way to number one.
The breakthrough also garnered Claudia her first Spellemannprisen nomination as a solo artist.
The following year Claudia was one of six female singers celebrating the songs of Leonard Cohen on the best selling album “Hadde månen en søster” (“If The Moon Had A Sister”).
Through the years Claudia has contributed to more than a hundred albums and she has sung with Danish star Poul Krebs, Brit Andrew Matheson, Americans Little Steven, Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane, Tom Russell, Erik Andersen and David Olney, Swedish author/ singer/ songwriter Ulf Lundell and many Norwegians including Sivert Høyem (Madrugada), Henning Kvitnes, Trond Granlund and Jonas Fjeld (of Danko, Fjeld, Andersen).
In 2003 Claudia did a duet with the singer in the band Jim Stärk on a very different folk-rock version of the “Grease” film-hit “You’re The One That I Want” that reached number 1 on the Norwegian charts.
At the end of the 1990s Claudia moved to Nashville and became an active participant in the music city’s vibrant singer/ songwriter community, winning three SESAC-awards for songwriting and also appeared at the Grand Ole Opry and The Bluebird Cafe.
Since “Flowers & Thorns”, Claudia has released six more solo albums: “Emanuel’s Secret” (1997), “Soul on Soul” (1999), ”Collection” (2005) a compilation album with 3 new songs, “John Clare’s Dream” (2006), “Follow the lines” (2014), “Let the Ribbons fly” (2016) and “Restless Souls” (2019).
Four of the albums were nominated for Spellemannprisen (Norwegian Grammy), “Soul on Soul” was also nominated for an Edvard Award in Tono, and “Follow the lines” won Spellemannprisen in the country category.
After several decades in the music business, Claudia is still motivated by the belief that there is always a better song to be written and that you are never fully educated as a songwriter.
These days she is releasing a new batch of songs, one by one, adding them up for a full album release at the end of 2024.
This different approach started with the song “You & Me & Billie” in the summer of 2023. It’s a song dealing with the most difficult subject matter of all – the loss of a loved one.
