This weekend’s reunion of The Hamilton-Bates Blue Flames (well, three-fourths of them — bassist Preston Hubbard sends his regrets) will give fans a chance to see one of Rhode Island’s biggest musical success stories and one of the state’s comeback kids.

The Blue Flames didn’t last too long, but they were a phenomenon in Providence in the late ’60s and early ’70s — a group of teenagers mixing R&B, blues and jazz in places such as the old Joe’s Upstairs and the original Met Café, playing four nights a week and more and ending when saxophonist Scott Hamilton moved to New York at the urging of none other than Roy Eldridge.

Hamilton was sitting in with college students the day he got his first saxophone at age 14. He moved to New York in 1975 and has played with Benny Goodman, Rosemary Clooney, Warren Vache, Ruby Braff and more, but he’s best known as a bandleader and has been recording on the Concord Jazz label for the past 20 years. He moved to London eight years ago, and to Florence, Italy, eight months ago. He plays throughout Europe and Scandinavia and gets back to Rhode Island once or twice a year.

“I’m looking forward to [the reunion],” Hamilton says. “I haven’t had much time to think about it.”

It doesn’t sound like he’s had much chance to think of much lately. He’s been touring throughout Europe at clubs, concert halls and festivals, taking advantage of the European appetite for American jazz. Hamilton says that moving to London was a no-brainer — he was crossing the ocean about 15 times a year already. “There’s maybe more places to play in Europe than there are in America,” Hamilton says. “I think in America you’re more likely to sell people a CD, but there aren’t as many clubs and little concert venues.”

John Worsley, one of Rhode Island’s jazzmen-about-town and one of the organizers of the reunion, remembers talking with pianist Dave McKenna about Hamilton. “Dave McKenna told me, ‘He’s all the great saxophonists rolled into one, made into his own,’ ” Worsley says now. “And I said, ‘Dave, we’re talking some major players you’ve worked with — Zoot Sims and Stan Getz and Al Cohn and all those people.’ And he said, ‘John, I know. I played with those guys and I know what I’m saying!’ — he got a little angry with me — ‘He has learned from every single one of them and rolled them into his own style and he is the world’s best living saxophonist.’ ”

Hamilton makes it back to the U.S., and Rhode Island, once or twice a year, including a visit to New Jersey last year to record a new album of swing and blues with Duke Robillard. “He was our hero” in the Blue Flames days, Hamilton says.

While a Hamilton visit is always welcome, he says that this reunion isn’t spurred by him, or by nostalgia. “This is not so much because there’s a great clamoring for me to get the band back together as it is that Fred Bates, who is a wonderful guitar player, retired for 30 years, and now he wants to play again. And I’m just dying to hear him play again. I’ve missed him all these years.” He and Bates played a date together at Chan’s in February.

Bates gave up the music business when he left the Flames: “He wanted to get married and try something with a little more stability,” Hamilton says. According to Bates, the music went out of him to the point where, when his guitar was stolen about 20 years ago, he didn’t buy another one.

About three years ago, though, he got the itch again. He bought a guitar and began playing around his Warwick home. Then he went to see Robillard, a friend from the old days who immediately offered him a chance to sit in with his band and eventually got Bates to play on his World Full of Blues disc. “One thing led to another, and seeing Duke, seeing the guys again, it was nice,” Bates says.

After the Flames, drummer Chuck Riggs headed to Vermont to play with the Widespread Depression Orchestra and now lives and works in New York, working occasionally with Hamilton. He saw Hamilton about three months ago at a festival in London and heard from the sax player that there was a move afoot to get the Blue Flames back together. “I thought he was joking,” Riggs says.

So, guys, it’s been 30 years. What songs are you gonna play?

“It’s bound to be bluesy, because that was the nature of what we used to do,” Hamilton says. “I would love to play some of the rhythm-and-blues things we used to play at dances, if everyone else is up for it.” The band started off “playing the blues all night,” then learned a few more jazz standards, particularly ballads, as they got more work.

“I imagine we’re going to do ‘Honky Tonk,’ because that was Fred’s guitar signature,” Riggs says, “and I’m hoping we’ll do some R&B and some standards.”

“I’m not about to pass up any opportunity to play with these guys,” Bates says.

“Whatever happens, it’ll be good,” Hamilton says. “It’ll be fun, anyway.”

The Hamilton-Bates Blue Flames play a private gig at Brown University on Friday night and at Local 121, 121 Washington St., Providence, on Saturday night. There are shows at 8 and 10 p.m. and admission is $20. Call (401) 274-2121.

Mystic Sea Music Festival

The 29th Annual Sea Music Festival, at Mystic Seaport, runs Friday through Sunday with maritime music by performers from the U.S., Canada and England, including Trou Braz, Robbie O’Connell, Cliff Haslam and more, as well as workshops (Songs of Fishing; Women and the Sea and more) and symposia on topics ranging from the attack on the General Armstrong in the War of 1812 and songs of the coastal fishermen of Ghana.

For tickets, call (888) 973-2767,

and for more information, go to www.mysticseaport.org/ seamusicfestival.

South County jazz

Paul Broadnax and the Rhode Island Connection close out two-weekend jazz festival at the Courthouse Center for the Arts, 3481 Kingstown Rd., West Kingston, on Saturday at 8 p.m. Admission is $15 for adults, $10 for seniors, students and Courthouse members. Call (401) 782-1018 for more.