Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr., a prolific songwriter who, under the stage name Jay Reatard, was a force in the worlds of punk and garage rock, was found dead in his home in Memphis early on Wednesday. He was 29.

The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reported that a roommate had found him in bed, and the police have opened an investigation into his death. A spokeswoman for the Shelby County medical examiner in Tennessee said an autopsy had been performed but that a cause of death had not been determined.

With a discography of 22 albums and more singles than even he could keep accurate count of, Lindsey was a creative tornado. And while his aesthetic was deliberately rough — he favored corrosive blasts of guitar and simple smacks on the drums, usually recorded by Lindsey alone with the most minimal equipment — his facility with sweet melodies and his concise, economical songwriting style earned him wide respect among critics and fans.

Lindsey was born in Lilbourn, Mo., and moved with his family to Memphis when he was 8; his precociousness as a teenage noisemaker got the Lindseys ejected from more than one address. “We’d stay three to six months in a place, and they’d make us move ’cause he wouldn’t turn that volume down,” his father, Jimmy Lindsey, said. “They even said, ‘Don’t worry about the lease, just go.’”

With help from members of the Oblivians, a proudly sloppy veteran Memphis garage-rock band, Lindsey started his recording career at 15 and released music with numerous bands, including the Reatards, the Lost Sounds, the Bad Times and the Final Solutions. By the mid-2000s he had established a reputation in the rock underground for his songwriting skill and devotion to do-it-yourself production methods, as well as for a sometimes belligerent stage manner.

Lindsey began to reach a wider audience in 2006 with his first solo album, “Blood Visions” (Fat Possum), and in recent years he continued to produce music at a rapid pace. “Few indie-rockers have ever been on a roll like this,” Spin magazine said in a review of his latest album, “Watch Me Fall,” released in August on Matador Records, a trend-setting independent label in New York.

He is survived by his mother, Devonna May; his father, Jimmy Lindsey; and three sisters, Leslie Lindsey, Stephanie Duncan and Gara May.

Lindsey’s productivity was a source of as much admiration as curiosity in the music press, and he was often asked to explain his compulsion to create so much music so quickly.

“I’m just trying to get the idea out before the inspiration is gone,” he said. “Everything I do is motivated by the fear of running out of time.”