What are some standards that stay on one major key?

[JohnRoss]

Nope, because that's not jazz

Is that a joke?

[JohnRoss]

The Preacher by Horace Silver

Interesting. I was going to say, "go back to roots" (The Saints, Closer Walk with Thee, Battle Hymn of the Republic, etc.), and I always thought The Preacher was intentionally retro in that way.

[dinot]

Bill Evans composition Peace Piece

There you go.

It's not a jazz tune, of course. It's sort of meditative, new age, etc.

[JensL]

Isn't a tune that stays on one major scale a simple modal tune?

So just to make what I say clear here's how I loosely define modal tunes.

A modal tune or a modal part of a tune stays on one sound (one chord/maybe two very similar chords f.ex a Dm7 G7 vamp)

Almost all standards are moving a lot more even if they are only in one key, and traditionally you'd want to follow the movement if you play straight ahead jazz. In that way a song that goes | Cmaj7 Am7 | Dm7 G7 | is not modal since it is moving from tonic to dominant and back.

So in this way almost no standards are modal, an dmost modal tunes have more than one mode involved.

Jens