Michael Masser, a stockbroker-turned-composer whose lush melodies were recorded by Whitney Houston, Diana Ross, Roberta Flack and many other star vocalists, died on Thursday at his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 74.

The cause was complications of a stroke he had suffered three years ago, said Kurt Vitolo, his business manager.

As Mr. Masser biked to work as a broker in Midtown Manhattan in the 1960s, he would detour to the Juilliard School to putter on a piano. A self-taught pianist, he could not read music, but an inner muse was urging him to switch careers (he had earlier dropped out of law school) and pursue his true calling.

“I was working as a stockbroker in New York and had the seemingly perfect life,” Mr. Masser told The Chicago Sun-Times in 1988. That life included an office atop the Pan Am Building, a nine-room apartment and a farm in Vermont. “But I was unhappy, and someone I knew convinced me to see a shrink. I walked in and told the doctor I wanted to write music.