I gotta say Bing Crosby still holds a place in my house as the master crooner. If you like your voices more manly than smooth, I love the power Howard Keel brings to his singing.
I also have an oddball favorite, James Cagney. Like Branagh with Shakespeare, he turns the musical cadences into everyday speech that rolls off the tongue in rat-a-tat fashion. There is no better delivery of...
I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy
Yankee Doodle do or die
For the women, Judy Garland has a lot of forgettable songs, but she also has the greatest of classics. For character singing, I immediately think of Gwen Verdon.