"Borning Cry" songwriter dies at age 79
John Carl Ylvisaker, a songwriter and composer best known for “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry,” died March 9 at age 79 at his home in Waverly, Iowa.
His website gives the cause of death as complications from cancer and multiple system atrophy.
He studied music and history at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, and during part of the 1960s traveled around the United States working for civil rights causes, counting activist and folk musician Pete Seeger as a major influence, his website notes.
