That's exactly what the black ring is, a highly "sticky" oversticker, that I and other importers had to buy from MCPS Ltd. (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society), to comply with the ruling that the "Columbia" name and trade mark device had to be obscured from all US product imported into the UK. This must have been in force in 1974, due to the date of this particular album issue, but I can recall 1979 as a tricky year, with EMI on the warpath, using MCPS as their "rabid dogs" to bully and cajole.......didn't work on me.
Supplied on a roll, attached to a backing paper, each sticker was die-cut into various sections to comply with other parts of the album sleeve, and was to be used to mask 45s also and those parts would have comprised the inner part of the ring shown above.
The black "ring" shown above was the absolute outside dimension of the compliance sticker, with the other elements contained within the ring. Four of the rings would have been required for this double album set, with obvious wastage of the inner unused sections, and from memory, each sticker was 25p......hopefully someone will confirm or deny, after all it was nearly 40 years ago.
Sadly I don't have the MCPS roll I started with any longer, it would have made an excellent artifact for this website.....
There is a further reference to these stickers at KC 31750 Mott The Hoople.
Looks like a typical US copy imported to the UK, I've seen a bunch of these kind of imports, US 45's imported to the UK also had "Columbia" blacked out as CBS (UK) did not have the rights to the Columbia name at that time, EMI did.
Just uploaded a variation I have. Has anyone seen this before and is it US? The runout matrices are:-
AL-32819-2C hand-written side 1
PBL-32819-2C Hand-written side 4
AL-32820-2D machined side 2
P BL 32820-2C machined side 4
It looks like a black circle over the Windfall logo and on the cover Columbia has a black tag over it on the back cover at the top left whilst Windfall is blacked-out on the spine
Added missing label images. Albums were sequenced with Sides 1 & 4 on one LP, Sides 2 & 3 on second LP. This was to facilitate the use of record changers that stacked albums and keep the music in order without the extraordinary effort needed to get up and turn the LP over!
Nearly 33 minutes of Nantucket Sleighride...awesome!