Tony Bennett: Once More With Feeling : Music: Returning to his hometown gave the singer a new perspective for album No. 93.

Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco, but it was in his old neighborhood that he found it.

Last summer, the celebrated pop singer, who between 1950 and 1965 scored no fewer than 24 Top 40 hits on the national charts, returned to Astoria--a working-class section of Queens, N.Y.--to record his 93rd album, “Astoria: Portrait of the Artist.”

Bennet says it is perhaps the most heartfelt album he’s ever done. He didn’t just interpret songs. Finding himself back where he was born, he was inspired to interpret his own life, as well.

“It was my son’s idea,” said Bennett, who will perform Friday night at Humphrey’s on Shelter Island. “He said, let’s do an album where you go back home. For years, people have been saying, why don’t you write an autobiography, and I would always say no, I’m not ready.

“But then this idea was placed in me, and I figured, as long as I’m an interpreter of popular American songs, why not find songs that fit the mood, the feeling I got from returning home, and create something a little more vital than an ordinary autobiography--a group of song sketches about the different things that happen, and the feelings you get, as you’re growing up.

“What was going through my mind was this wonderful recall of good feelings--of the first time I fell in love, of the great meals my mom cooked for me, of the friends I had on street corners and how we used to sit around on summer nights, get big quarts of beer and sing tunes together.”

Accordingly, “Astoria” is very much a musical autobiography, divided into 14 “chapters.” The first, “When Do the Bells Ring for Me,” is a song “that reminds me of the many hours I spent as a boy, walking on the banks of the East River while admiring the spectacular view of the most powerful city in the world,” according to Bennett’s self-penned liner notes.

Subsequent chapters include “I Was Lost, I Was Drifting,” about Bennett’s post-World War II soul-searching; “The Folks That Live on the Hill,” about the American dream he harbored and eventually realized, and “‘Where Did the Magic Go,” something of a Requiem for the pre-rock ‘n’ roll “golden age of popular music in America” in which he became a star.

The album closes with “I’ve Come Home Again,” which Bennett describes as “a fitting ending that really hits the bull’s-eye.”

“The whole thing just flowed out of me, whereas, say, five years ago, I wouldn’t have been ready yet,” Bennett said. “But for some reason, going on 64, I was finally able to reflect, to put my life in perspective.”

The spirit of deja vu that pervades “Astoria” isn’t limited to the music. The album’s front cover shows Bennett standing in his neighborhood at the age of 15; the back cover has him in the same spot last year, at age 63. “Everything is still very much as I remember it,” Bennett said. “Even though Astoria is only 15 minutes from downtown New York, it’s a lot like a small Midwestern town. It’s real family-oriented, blue-collar-oriented, made up of people who make the town work: secretaries and teachers and bus drivers and cab drivers and people who actually build the buildings; nice neighbors who say hello to you on the street.

“And it felt so good, after 40 years of traveling all over the world, to go back and still find the same type of people, to still hear the same accents, the same colloquialisms.”

Bennett was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto, the son of a grocer father and seamstress mother. He began singing in church at the age of 7; in his teens, he worked as a singing waiter at a neighborhood restaurant.

After serving as an infantryman in the Army during World War II, Bennett returned to Astoria and resumed his singing career in local nightclubs. He also made several appearances on “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” radio show.

In 1949, Bennett successfully auditioned for a part in Pearl Bailey’s musical revue at the Old Greenwich Village Inn, and soon got his big break.

“Bob Hope came down to see me and asked me to come up and sing with him at the Paramount Theater,” Bennett recalled. “He didn’t like my stage name, Joe Bari, so he said, ‘What’s your real name?’

“I told him, and he said, ‘That’s too long for the marquee--let’s Americanize it into Tony Bennett.’ ”

A year later, Bennett, with Hope’s blessing, auditioned for Mitch Miller of Columbia Records with a demo recording of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” a song revived from the 1934 film “Moulin Rouge.”

He promptly got signed, and although his Columbia debut, a remake of “Boulevard,” barely cracked the charts, his second single, “Because of You,” was on the charts for 31 weeks, peaking at No. 1 in 1951.

Over the ensuing decade and a half, Bennett continued to crank out hit after hit, including “Just in Time,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” “Stranger in Paradise,” “Rags to Riches” and, in 1962, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” his signature song.

“It wasn’t even the A side, it was the B side” of the record, Bennett recalled. “I thought it would just be a local hit in the San Francisco area, knowing how much people there loved their city, but it really turned around, breaking open all over the world.”

Three years later, Bennett scored his last Top 40 hit with “If I Ruled the World,” from the musical “Pickwick.” In 1971, he was unceremoniously dumped by Columbia, only to be re-signed in 1986.

In the meantime, he had recorded two critically acclaimed albums with jazz pianist Bill Evans, on the independent Fantasy and Improv labels, and launched a side career as a painter, attaching his “Anthony Benedetto” signature to oils, watercolors and pastels seen at exhibitions throughout the world.

Since his 1986 re-emergence on Columbia, Bennett has recorded three albums: “The Art of Excellence,” “Bennett/Berlin” and, most recently, “Astoria: Portrait of the Artist.”

He’s so pleased with the latter that he plans to take the autobiographical approach a step further with his next release. Album No. 94, scheduled to come out next March, will be a 40-year retrospective of Bennett’s illustrious singing career.

“Believe it or not, even though I interpreted those songs, most of them are autobiographic, too,” Bennett said. “My entire career, I only sang songs I felt, songs I felt I lived at the time.

“And even though they’re just songs, there are these feelings that we all feel, all of us, that are in these songs, and they kind of tell my life.”